Research database

Intergenerational fairness (IF) is a cornerstone of Europe’s long-term cohesion and resilience. Demographic change, technological transformation and fiscal pressures are reshaping how opportunities, risks and resources are distributed across generations. Yet policymakers still lack coherent tools and indicators to assess whether today’s choices secure equivalent or better prospects for those who are young now—and those yet to be born. The LIFe project addresses this gap by delivering an integrated life-course framework for analysing intergenerational fairness across seven European countries, covering education, labour markets, income, wealth, health and wellbeing. The project pursues three core objectives: (i) advancing the study of intergenerational fairness through a life-course perspective, reconstructing past and projecting future trajectories to show how inequalities within and between cohorts compound over time; (ii) creating a multidisciplinary, modular research infrastructure that synthesises insights from economics, demography, sociology, public health and political science into a common analytical system; and (iii) equipping policymakers with an open-source, cross-country microsimulation toolkit to evaluate the generational impact of policies, supported by a co-created Policy Action Plan.