Age, Work and Social Security: The Policy Context

In historical terms, the subject of this conference is relatively new. Except for a few privileged groups, the whole concept of retirement is largely an invention of this century. One hundred years ago, social security as a way of providing for pensions was in its first year and no one could have predicted that the baby would survive infancy and grow into what some are beginning to see as a dangerous monster and others as the key to cohesion in modern societies, increasingly being reproduced in Third World countries. A century ago the expectation of life was such that pensions, where they existed, were more a reward for surviving than the normal expectation of every contributor. In Britain, for example, a child of ten in the year 1900, who had survived the vulnerable period of early childhood, could only expect to live on average to the age of nearly 60. And the fertility decline which is central to current concerns was only just beginning and was on a very modest scale. Effective means of birth control, other than illegal abortion and infanticide, were unknown and the subject was certainly unmentionable.