Pigou and future generations: a Cambridge tradition

Abstract

In The Economics of Welfare and elsewhere, A. C. Pigou took the view that future people should be treated equally with present people. He stressed our defective telescopic faculty, mortality, and weak linkages over time and argued that the present generation would consequently devote too few resources to investment, particularly in human capital. Pigou linked his argument with the then contemporary controversies about natural resource conservation and about eugenics. This 'Cambridge tradition' holds that issues of generational justice leave an important role for the state and cannot be resolved simply at the level of the individual or the family. (c) 1996 Academic Press Limited Copyright 1996 by Oxford University Press.