103 ar tic le 2 © The Policy Press • 2011 • ISSN 1759-8273 Journal of Poverty and Social Justice • vol 19 • no 2 • 2011 • 103–15 • 10.1332/175982711X573978 Key words pension • gender • privatisation Privatisation and pensions: what does this mean for women? Liam Foster This paper considers the relationship between gender and private pension provision. It provides a brief history of private pensions before considering the implications of pension policy on women’s private pension situation under New Labour and, briefly, the coalition government. For instance
An emerging consensus sees British pension policy as unravelling. Yet the gender impact of expanding private pension provision and relying increasingly on means-testing has been largely overlooked.
This book examines key issues such as: how pension choices over the lifecourse are structured by gender, class and ethnicity; the impact of changing patterns of partnership and parenthood on pension building; the distributional impact of privatising pensions; questions about individualisation of rights, survivor benefits, a citizen’s pension and means-testing; the EU dimension - comparing alternative strategies for improving gender equity.
The book is essential reading for teachers, researchers and students in social gerontology, sociology, social policy and women’s studies; practitioners in social work and welfare rights; policy makers concerned with income in later life; and all those who wish to improve their understanding of pensions issues.
565 Policy & Politics • vol 42 • no 4 • 565-80 • © Policy Press 2014 • #PPjnl @policy_politics Print ISSN 0305 5736 • Online ISSN 1470 8442 • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/030557312X655774 Women’s pensions in the European Union and the current economic crisis Liam Foster, l.foster@sheffield.ac.uk University of Sheffield, UK The current financial and economic crisis has serious implications for the underlying ageing challenge. It has demonstrated weaknesses in the design and long-term sustainability of numerous pension schemes. While many EU countries have
Introduction After 1945, life expectancy in Britain continued to rise, partly because of the benefits of the ‘welfare state’, full employment, and the revolution in medical science. While the population as a whole grew, those over 65 years constituted a slowly increasing proportion of the total. In terms of welfare provision, the restructuring of the national insurance scheme in the late 1940s proved problematic. The value of the contributory pension, in any event designed as a subsistence award, was declining thanks to inflation. The scheme’s flat
287 TWENTY SIX Pathways to pensions Summary Demography – specifically enhanced life expectancy – explains the 44% growth in the pensioner caseload. Enhanced state benefits – notably SERPS, which ironically has now been abandoned – and the maturation and greater coverage of occupational pensions account for the fall in the numbers of pensioners claiming means- tested supplementation. Means-tested caseloads would have been even smaller had not housing policy driven up rents. They would be greater if universal take-up had been achieved. Despite the success of past
245 TWENTY ONE Trends in pension provision Summary The number of retirement pensioners increased by 44% to 10.8 million between 1971 and 1998. 64% of pensioners are women. Retirement pensioners constitute the largest group of benefit recipients and in 1998/99 accounted for 46% of social security expenditure. Increased spending on elderly people was responsible for 42% of the total rise in benefits expenditure between 1971/72 and 1998/99. Virtually all men aged 65 and women aged 60 or older are entitled to a state pension (which can be postponed). Most pensioners
259 TWENTY THREE Institutional aspects of pension provision Summary British pension provision, featuring low National Insurance pensions, helps to create two nations in old age, one characterised by low incomes and means-tested supplementation, the other by relative affluence due to income from occupational pensions. However, pension reforms enacted until 1978 served to enhance the level and coverage of state provision, leading each new generation of pensioners to be better provided for than earlier ones. Greater coverage of improved occupational pensions
221 Pensions, public opinion and policy ELEVEN pensions, public opinion and policy John Hills ‘The trouble with the British is that they want European-level services with US levels of tax.’ This quotation, from Wall Street Journal coverage of the UK General Election of 2001, was used by Howard Glennerster (2003, p 199) to illustrate one of the besetting difficulties facing UK policy makers. The problem is that, in reality, ‘someone has to pay’, as he headlined an early section of his book on Understanding the Finance of Welfare. Pensions policy, and the
Introduction The last few decades have witnessed rising concerns about the level of expenditure on public pension schemes, especially in the context of an ageing population ( Foster, 2014 ). In response to these concerns, it is not unusual for governments to launch work-based pension reforms, which put emphasis on individual responsibilities and participation in formal employment ( Maier, De Graaf and Frericks, 2007 ; Ginn and MacIntyre, 2013 ). In addition to measures intended to privatise pension systems, many governments have attempted to raise the
251 TWENTY TWO The demography of pensions’ growth Summary The increase in the Retirement Pension caseload between 1971 and 1998 was driven almost entirely by demographic factors. Increased life expectancy more than offset a 35% fall in the number of births. Of the total growth in the pensioner population (over the slightly shorter period 1973-94) 46% was accounted for by increased survival after retirement. Migration had little effect on pensioner caseloads; less than 2% of pensioners were born abroad. A slight fall in the proportion of female pensioners – who
