ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the broad agreement in the literature that present generations have obligations to future generations, while noting that there is less agreement about the basis of such obligations, or about the specifics of the obligations. It provides a discussion of “discounting,” the usual economic technique for making temporal comparisons, focusing especially on intergenerational considerations. The chapter proposes a set of intergenerational equity principles that can help make trade-offs between generations in decision making and priority setting. While some aspects of discounting can be preserved in making comparisons across generations, the discounting technique is inadequate to handle the concerns of intergenerational equity. Whether people are willing to accept additional risks/burdens for themselves instead of shifting them to future generations depends on a variety of factors, including the sense of obligation to the future and its importance. Associated with risks are benefits and costs which are increasingly uncertain over long time periods.
