Objectives: Aging reshapes the balance between younger and older generations within the population. These demographic shifts have significant implications for economic and environmental resource allocations and the transformation of social and political status and individual rights. To explore these dynamics, we present findings from Spoke 7 (Cultural and Political Dimensions of Ageing Societies) of the Age-It Research Program, which has developed a novel Index of Intergenerational Justice. 

Methods: The Index of Intergenerational Justice, applied to a broad sample of European countries, captures three key dimensions of justice: distributive fairness, social (status and relational) equality, and political equality. We focus on differences across age groups, rather than across cohorts, due to well-documented challenges in direct cohort comparisons. The distributive fairness dimension covers economics (relative poverty, unemployment, permanent contracts, wages), health (unmet medical needs), and the environment (environmental risk exposure). The social equality dimension captures social isolation (measured through leisure activities, internet access, social contacts, and close relationships), discrimination, and mental well-being. Finally, the political equality dimension considers political perceptions, political engagement, and political representation. 

Results: Preliminary findings reveal substantial differences across age groups in the distributive fairness dimension. A cluster of countries appears to favor older adults, while another favors younger adults. By contrast, in the social equality dimension, nearly all countries tend to favor young adults. 

Discussion: The Intergenerational Justice Index provides a valuable tool for assessing fairness across age groups. By highlighting disparities, it can inform and support public policies aimed at fostering more equitable relationships between generations. 

Abstract

This paper examines how the textual context within questions on Brazil’s ENEM—the world’s second-largest college admission test—affects performance gaps across socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and ethnicity. Using data from over 3.8 million test-takers across 13 years (2010–2022), I analyze question-specific gaps, linking them to words and topics in each question through bag-of-words and topic modeling, combined with penalized regressions, to identify key drivers of these gaps. Based on top predictive words and topics, I generate hypotheses on how specific contexts influence disparities. Testing these hypotheses with a rich set of fixed effects that help rule out alternative drivers, I find that textual context matters: SES gaps grow by 0.8 percentage points (p.p.) –13% of the SES gap—when questions feature financial language but decrease by 0.3 p.p. (5% of SES gap) in everyday contexts. Gender gaps are sensitive to negative effects only among high-ability test-takers: for these students, abstract scientific contexts widen the gap by 0.3 p.p. (17% of the high-ability gender gap), while creative and social contexts reduce it consistently across the entire ability distribution by 0.6 p.p. (16% of gender gap). Additionally, questions featuring female characters help close gender gaps, while references to underprivileged individuals widen SES disparities. Ethnic gaps, however, show no significant text-based predictors except in the language subject. These findings show that textual context affects testing equity, highlighting paths to fairer design.

Abstract   

This paper evaluates a pro-competition reform in the Chilean pension system that shifted the enrollment process from individual choice to a default option set by competitive auctions held every two years. The reform consistently lowered fees and modestly improved the rate of participants switching to more cost-effective fund managers. Notably, only one of the six auctions analyzed significantly influenced participant behavior, with a slight increase in both the switching rate and the likelihood of selecting cheaper managers. While fee awareness and broader systemic improvements remained limited, reduced fees provided extra disposable income, which led to increased voluntary retirement savings among some members, suggesting that savings from lower fees are partly reinvested into retirement. Additionally, the study underscores a stark contrast in participant response to fee increases post-auction. While most firms maintained stable fees, one manager sharply raised them by 182% after the mandatory two-year price freeze, prompting approximately 16% of active affiliates to exit their plans—a reaction that highlights members’ heightened sensitivity to losses over equivalent gains. This finding reflects a strategic exploitation of contributor inertia and underscores the challenges of securing long-term benefits from competitive mechanisms alone, revealing the potential for managerial exploitation without sustained regulatory oversight  

Abstract

What are the developmental consequences of maternal stress during breastfeeding? This paper investigates that question using the 2010 Chilean earthquake as a natural experiment. We combine exogenous variation in the timing and intensity of stress exposure with detailed data on breastfeeding practices and child development. Our identification strategy exploits two sources of variation: (i) whether the child was still being breastfed—particularly if under six months old—at the time of the earthquake, and (ii) heterogeneity in maternal psychological responses to the shock, measured through post-earthquake symptom reports. We show that maternal stress during breastfeeding leads to shorter and lower-quality breastfeeding spells. These disruptions have significant effects on early development: affected children exhibit worse cognitive and non- cognitive outcomes at age two. Importantly, these effects are not observed among children who had already been weaned, and they do not replicate in placebo samples. We also document suggestive maternal behavioral responses and a reversal in non-cognitive outcomes by age seven, consistent with compensatory investments over time. Our results highlight how stress exposure during breastfeeding—if not mitigated—can have lasting effects on some dimensions of child development and underscore the importance of incorporating maternal mental health support into early childhood and postnatal policy frameworks.

Abstract

Centralized admission systems are designed with the expectation that welfare improvements can be achieved through rule-setting, competition, and coordination. These systems, which are becoming increasingly popular, along with other mechanism design interventions, rely heavily on the assumption that participants can understand the rules and play optimally. However, recent evidence suggests that real-world applications of centralized admission systems often fail to meet theoretical benchmarks, leading to significant fairness implications. In this paper, we leverage a policy change in the Chilean system, which made previous years' cutoffs—an essential element in application strategies—less informative. This distortion affected students differently depending on their position in the ability distribution. Using comprehensive data on individuals who participated before and after the change, we show that increasing the complexity of the application process led to a reduction in the likelihood of being admitted to their first reported preference, with enrollment rates decreasing by 12 percentage points. We propose a model in which agents differ in their ability to predict the new cutoffs, explaining the observed behaviors based on differences in overconfidence. While all students applied with overconfidence, those with lower baseline overconfidence performed relatively better.