Monitoring Intergenerational Fairness in the EU

About

The EU Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness (COM(2026) 110), adopted by the Commission in March 2026, aims to ensure that today's choices contribute positively also to tomorrow's opportunities, and that benefits and responsibilities are shared fairly across age groups. It sets out a new Intergenerational "Contract" built on three dimensions: Fair Policymaking, Fair Opportunities and Fair Places. Under Fair Opportunities, the first action of the Commission is to compile an Intergenerational Fairness Index to identify opportunities and gaps, inform policy decisions and promote fairness across generations.

Explore Indices and Methodology

Explore the Data

The Intergenerational Fairness platform puts this commitment into practice. It brings together a suite of composite indicators, generational profiles, an interactive indicator dashboard and short analytical outputs. Together, these show how the horizon of opportunities has evolved for young and old people, in the 27 EU Member States and over time, from the early 2000s to the latest available year.

Timeline »  The road to the EU Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness

The tool was developed through a participatory process. A three-month scoping phase involving around 200 participants from Commission services, EU agencies and civil society produced a long list of more than 200 candidate indicators. The composite indicators are constructed following the OECD/JRC Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators.

The Strategy presents intergenerational fairness not as a new policy field but as a guiding principle to be mainstreamed across existing EU policies and processes, including the Multiannual Financial Framework and the European Semester. The platform provides the shared evidence base for applying this principle.

Data Pills and Data Policy Briefs

The platform translates the data into short analytical outputs:

• Data Pills are short reads spotlighting positive stories from across the EU, drawn directly from the tool's data.
• Data Policy Briefs are developed with JRC domain experts to examine complex intergenerational challenges, such as housing affordability for young people and the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

The section also links to related JRC research on income and housing dynamics, informal long-term care and long-term care demand projections in the context of demographic change.  

Pledge on Intergenerational Fairness

The Pledge on Intergenerational Fairness invites local and regional politicians to commit to intergenerational fairness as a guiding principle for decision-making and law-making at local and regional level, in line with the fair places dimension of the Strategy.

The Pledge is open to representatives in EU Member States, candidate countries and Erasmus+ associated countries. An interactive map shows the signatories across Europe.