With the publication of its third Demography Report, the European Commission has put demography where it belongs: at the centre of the policy agenda. At the launch event, one question dominated the discussion: the demographic trends are clear – ageing populations, low fertility, pressure on pension systems – but what does intergenerational fairness look like in practice?
Or, more specifically: which policy choices are most urgent, and how can science help deliver them? This post combines two answers given at the event: one on the substance of “fair adaptation”, and one on the science-policy interface needed to make it work.
Adaptation, not reversal
The strategic answer is already contained in the title of the report: Demographic transformation in the EU: Understanding change and adapting to its consequences (European Commission & Joint Research Centre [JRC], 2026). The disturbance Europe is facing is not a temporary one: we are in the post-transitional phase of the demographic transition, underway since the late 1960s. The distinctive feature of this transition is fertility at a persistently sub-replacement level. Only five Member States had a total fertility rate above 1.5 in 2025 (Eurostat, 2026).
As the Commission’s report rightly concludes, policies must adapt to, rather than seek to reverse, these changes. Such adaptation does not mean abandoning measures with a moderating effect on fertility or migration trends; it means, however, abandoning the illusion of reversal.
That the EUROPOP2025 projections assume a “fertility recovery” should be seen as a very optimistic interpretation of data. In service of scientific honesty, projections going as far as the year 2100 should not be read with the same confidence as those for the coming three to four decades. Communicating uncertainty honestly is itself part of fairness to future generations.
Fairness as the test of adaptive policy
If adaptation is the strategy, intergenerational fairness is the test of whether we are adapting well. The report defines it precisely: policy decisions must not shift costs, risks or burdens from one generation to another (European Commission & JRC, 2026).
Three corrections make that principle operational.
First, make the invisible economic transfers visible. National Transfer Accounts, based on the methodology of Lee and Mason (2011), show that less than one-third of what societies transfer to children – private money transfers and unpaid care – appears in statistics, while roughly ninety per cent of transfers –pensions – to older people are publicly visible.
Once private transfers and unpaid care time are counted, it becomes clear that European societies (families and communities) actually give more to children than to the old – the opposite of what welfare states do. This “visibility asymmetry” produces pro-elderly welfare states within child-oriented societies (Gál et al., 2018). It also distorts every debate about who owes what to whom.
Publishing transfer accounts routinely, alongside the national accounts, would correct the picture – and provide the strongest evidence-based argument for a reconstruction of the life course: in societies where producers are increasingly outnumbered by consumers, rising longevity cannot mean more years spent solely as a consumer.
Second, understand that unfairness is a political choice, not a demographic fate. Poland is the cautionary tale: for years it had the most pro-elderly tilt of social spending in the entire OECD while still being one of its demographically youngest countries (Vanhuysse et al., 2021). During the economic transition of the early 1990s, the first demographic dividend was spent on current transfers instead of investment in children’s human capital – precisely when the returns would have been highest. That missed opportunity cannot be reversed; it can only be learned from.
Third, understand that (un)fairness runs through the unpaid care economy, and starts young. Unpaid care, done overwhelmingly by women, depresses employment, earnings and pensions: the EU gender pension gap still stands at about a quarter.
Meanwhile, the report quantifies the accumulating disadvantage of the young: poverty among young adults has nearly doubled across cohorts, from 11 per cent for those born in the 1960s to 22 per cent for the 1990s cohort; a third of young workers hold temporary contracts; and by 2038, Europeans aged 20–40 will be outnumbered by those over 65 (European Commission & JRC, 2026).
Fairness in practice means reversing this accumulation of disadvantage at the start of adult life, crediting care periods in pension systems, and building the services that redistribute care.
The most urgent policy choices
These policies are meant as a full life-course package, not a menu.
Activate the labour force. With today’s participation rates, the EU labour force shrinks by roughly 16 per cent, that is 33 million people by 2070; if all Member States converged to Swedish participation levels, the decline would be under 3 per cent.
Convergence of women’s participation alone would halve this effect. Since women are now better educated than men, the deficit of care services should be named for what it is: a barrier to employment growth.
Treat family policy as quality-of-life policy, not natalism. The real target is the fertility gap, measured as the distance between intended and realised family size – which requires family-friendly employment, quality early childhood education and care, housing and health systems working jointly.
It also brings reproductive health to the centre: family planning today means both avoiding unintended pregnancy and supporting conception for those who struggle (Fauser et al., 2024). The Polish Government Population Council recommends making reproductive health a strategic state priority, with statutory financing, national monitoring and integrated infertility treatment (Rządowa Rada Ludnościowa, 2026).
Prepare pensions and long-term care for the baby-boom wave, in an honest way. The EU benefit ratio falls from 43 to 36 per cent by 2070; in Poland, whose non-financial defined contribution system links benefits to lifetime earnings and life expectancy, the decline is the deepest in the Union, and stabilising adequacy would cost an additional 4.6 points of GDP (European Commission, 2024).
The fair answer is to communicate the trade-off, not hide it: longer, healthier working lives and supplementary savings, combined with a serious care workforce strategy – the pool of informal carers available at age 85 will be half that of today’s oldest old.
Housing, territory and migration. Europe needs roughly 650,000 additional homes a year; 72 per cent of EU regions will lose population by 2050, making the “right to stay” agenda the point where fairness between generations meets fairness between places; and migration eases the pace of ageing without altering its trajectory, it works only with serious, strategic integration policy.
How to pay for it
The long-term returns of social investment constantly lose out to short-term fiscal consolidation. The High-Level Group on the Future of Social Protection therefore recommended a golden rule for public finances allowing borrowing for social investment, at least initially for social infrastructure, where the estimated annual gap is around EUR 142 billion (European Commission, 2023; Fransen et al., 2018).
The intergenerational logic is decisive: debt-financed consumption shifts costs to our children; debt-financed investment in their capabilities creates the human capital that will finance tomorrow’s welfare state (Hemerijck, 2017). And because demographic decisions have decade-long horizons while electoral democracy has short ones, with children, future generations and emigrants absent from the ballot (Krastev, 2017), reforms must be communicated not only in the language of fiscal balance, but as answers to a deeply felt anxiety about the continuity of our communities.
What science can offer – and where its role ends
From evidence to policy: Fair adaptation of this scale cannot be designed without methodologically sound, reliable and up-to-date evidence. Here, there is good news! Scientists are more engaged in the public sphere than ever: serving on permanent and ad hoc committees of the Commission and Member State governments, in parliamentary hearings and advisory boards. In recent welfare state reform committees in Germany, scientists made up two-thirds or more of the members.
And here, Europe does not have to start from scratch: a robust infrastructure already exists, from the JRC and Eurostat to the dense network of demographic research institutes, which is the very reason Population Europe was founded in 2009, today uniting over 40 leading research centres and more than 300 population experts across the EU. The demographic community stands ready.
Challenges remain
First, complexity: population change spans long- and short-term trends, from the European to the local level, and individual behaviour across the whole life course, with regions differing so strongly that no “one size fits all” solution exists; regional expertise and comparative perspectives are indispensable.
Second, communication: audiences are less and less willing to read long texts, social media has become a primary information source, and AI increasingly delivers summaries in place of original sources. Therefore, science must continually adapt to new and emerging modes of communication.
Third, the topics themselves: While it is important not to dramatise the consequences of demographic change and to view it instead as a challenge for politics, society and the economy that we must face, we cannot overlook the fact that many issues we tackle, such as regional shrinkage, skills shortages, longer working lives and unfulfilled fertility intentions, rarely generate popular or optimistic responses. In some cases, it may be more appropriate to talk about adapting to population trends than overcoming them.
The way to find solutions is transdisciplinary. Beyond demography’s methodological strength, the key is to overcome silo-thinking and invite stakeholders from science, politics, business and civil society to co-create policy responses – e.g., through confidential expert workshops, public stakeholder meetings, and consultations. Citizen engagement should be designed realistically, with impact assessment and without raising expectations that cannot be met; combining individual citizens with multiplier organisations representing large memberships is often the most effective route. And one tool provides curated insight into the experiences of not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of Europeans: the large comparative surveys.
Infrastructures such as SHARE (Börsch-Supan et al., 2013), the GGP – Generations and Gender Programme (Gauthier et al., 2018) and the new birth-cohort survey GUIDE – Growing Up in Digital Europe reveal the intentions, perceptions and life decisions of individuals across Europe, social infrastructures of our times whose continued funding and development is itself a policy priority. Data provided by these infrastructures with interdisciplinary projects, focused on the aspects such as resilience (i.e. FutuRes, rEUsilience), or intergenerational fairness (i.e. FAIRGENs project starting in September), social and geographical mobility in the context of democracy (We-Id, EduTrack) provide important contribution to finding relevant solutions.
One limitation must be stated clearly: scientists should never actively seek to influence decision-making. Researchers are not elected and hold no mandate for it. Their mandate – earned through qualification, peer review and open scientific competition – is to provide high-quality, non-partisan, up-to-date evidence, and to develop policy recommendations together with, not only for, decision-makers. No more, no less.
Conclusion
Demographic change is the most predictable transformation Europe faces. The unfairness would lie not in the trend, but in postponing adaptation, thus sending the bill to the smallest cohorts in our history. If policy is reoriented from short-term transfers to long-term investment – in health, education, care, integration and social capital – population shrinkage stops being a source of fear and becomes an impulse for modernisation.
Intergenerational fairness is the key: a transparent division of the costs and benefits of reform, measured through transfer accounts and fairness indices, financed through a golden rule, delivered through binding national strategies – and grounded in evidence co-created by researchers, policymakers and citizens together. Acting early, honestly and together is itself the core act of fairness between generations.
Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak is Vice Rector for Research and Director of the Institute of Statistics and Demography at SGH Warsaw School of Economics. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Population Europe Policy Lab.
Andreas Edel is the Executive Secretary of Population Europe, the network of Europe's leading population research centres.
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