Women's Organizations,Social Learning,and the Federal State: A Case Study of Canadian Pension Policy

The various ways which federalism influences gender policies has recently received a surge of academic interest. This article contributes to this literature by moving beyond formally adopted policies to study the influence of federalism on social learning amongst women's organizations. Using a most‐likely case study design, this exploratory work traces the policy positions held by women's organizations in Canada during a seven‐year period now known as the Great Pension Debate. Focusing on four empirical indicators of issue attention, participation in policy discussions, specificity of policy proposals, and consensus for reform, the findings suggest that the plurality and temporal proximity of successive policy venues – such as royal commissions and parliamentary committees – created by various governments offered women's organizations an optimum environment to engage in ongoing exchanges leading to the development, and greater specification, of policy positions.     

‘If this wasn’t here I probably wouldn’t be’: disabled workers’ views of employment support

UK governments since 1997 have introduced significant changes to move disabled people off benefits and into employment. Commentators have criticised the adoption of the ‘medical model’ of disability implicit in many of these policies, with its focus on individual rather than institutional change. This paper reports empirical data about participants’ experiences of one national supported employment programme. Participants of WORKSTEP were overwhelmingly positive about their experiences both of work and the support to find work. The rare reports of negative experiences reflect the focus on intervening at the level of individual workers, rather than the workplace or organisation of work. Analysis of their views is valuable in the light of ongoing welfare reform as well as recessionary pressures on labour markets and employment services, which, in emphasising individual solutions to employment problems, may overlook the need for more broad-based, social interventions.     

When Past Reforms Open New Opportunities: Comparing Old-age Insurance Reforms in Bismarckian Welfare Systems

France, Italy, Germany, Austria and Spain have all gone through several waves of pension reforms both in the 1990s and in the early 2000s. Comparing the politics of these reforms shows some similar trends: reforms were usually postponed until European integration and/or economic recession forced governments to act. Before the first wave of reforms, the main form of ‘action’ had been to increase payroll taxes to finance pensions. In the 1990s, reforms were usually negotiated on the basis of a quid pro quo: benefits were intended progressively to decrease in exchange for non-contributory pensions being financed from general tax revenues instead of through the insurance schemes. The second wave of reforms (during the 2000s) seems to have brought more innovation, with new goals such as the development of voluntary private pension funds and the need to increase employment rates among the elderly and to stop early retirement. The article aims, first, to trace the political processes leading to these reforms; second, to reveal the commonalities in these processes between the various cases; and third, to highlight the differences between the first and second waves of pension reform. It will emphasize the role of ‘sequencing’ and demonstrate how each pension reform facilitates the adoption of the next one.     

Denmark: Universal or Not So Universal Welfare State

This article questions whether or not Denmark is still a universal welfare state. It does so by first offering a comparative‐based analysis of the Nordic countries on central welfare state parameters. Second, the article utilizes a case‐based analysis in respect of three core areas of the Danish welfare state—pensions, unemployment and early retirement benefit—to assess the distinctiveness of the Danish model. The article concludes that, notwithstanding the Danish model is more mixed today than it used to be, it continues to be distinct in areas such as equality, full employment, a high level of spending on social security and an active labour market policy.     

‘I Might not Live That Long!’ A Study of Young Women's Pension Planning in the UK

There has been considerable concern about levels of pension saving especially given increases in longevity and rising pension deficits. In particular, the prospects of many future female pensioners have been questioned. As pensions are determined by contributions throughout the life course it is imperative to comprehend the attitudes, knowledge, expectations and savings habits of people from an early age to explore why under‐saving occurs. This is particularly pertinent given recent governments' emphasis on individual responsibility for financial provision in retirement. However, there is little research which focuses specifically on young women's attitudes or planning towards pensions despite considerable concern about the future of women's pensions. This article considers young women's (18–30) attitudes towards pensions and whether they differ according to socio‐economic status by using interviews with 15 women (five in routine and manual occupations, five intermediate, five professional and managerial) about how knowledge and choice, trust, responsibility, risk and uncertainty impact on their pension decisions. It is evident that the ability and willingness of people to contribute to a pension depends, among other things, on the pension offered by employers, the pension requirements in place and immediate financial needs. Therefore this article shows that pension policy needs to take into account women's employment histories, which are often fragmented and diverse, when considering young women's attitudes towards pension saving.     

When Is a Change Big Enough to Be a System Shift? Small System‐shifting Changes in German and Finnish Pension Policies

In the wake of Esping‐Andersen's and Pierson's landmark publications, comparative welfare state research has revolved around the retrenchment of social policy and the transformation of welfare state regimes. One of the chief problems of these studies is the treatment of time. Very often, changes are incremental and their real impacts are not immediately visible but take years or even decades before the consequences fully materialize. The purpose of this paper is to discuss those incremental processes—that consist of series of smaller “not‐system‐shifting changes”—which may gradually change central features of a welfare state. Pension programmes, spanning long time periods, provide a good example. Only in some rare cases were pension schemes reformed in one step and in such a way that one can definitely ascertain a system shift. Most changes, however, are gradual, and recurrently enacted minor adjustments seem to leave the basic principles of the scheme intact. In this paper pension reform policies in Germany and Finland will be used to answer the question of when a change is big enough to be labelled as a system shift. It is argued that small “not‐system‐shifting” changes of the last two decades will eventually alter the basic characteristics of old‐age security in both countries.     

Policy Change at a Time of Retrenchment: Recent Pension Reform in France, Germany, Italy and the UK

Two influential recent approaches to social policy in Europe imply (for different reasons) that the reforms currently on the agenda, which typically involve cost-containment, are peculiarly difficult to achieve. Esping-Andersen sees much of Europe as set in a "frozen welfare landscape", due to the power of the interests advantaged by the status quo. Pierson sees retrenchment as a peculiarly difficult problem for all governments, regardless of their political ideology. This paper reviews recent pension policy in France, Germany, Italy and the UK. It argues that developments in Germany indicate that it is possible to achieve appropriate policy change in the country which is often used as the paradigm of entrenched interests without major restructuring of the system. Conversely, recent reforms in the UK (seen by Pierson as the country which has achieved the most rapid changes) appear disproportionate to the scale of the problems faced and may have damaged pensioners' interests. This indicates that the capacity to achieve substantial reform is not necessarily in itself a virtue. The real issue is the quality of reform achieved.     

The quality of social security benefit data in the British Family Resources Survey: implications for investigating income support take-up by pensioners

Summary.  Family Resources Survey (FRS) data for April 1997 to March 2000 are used to estimate the take-up of income support (IS) by a subset of pensioners. We scrutinize the quality of FRS data for this purpose and describe a process of identifying and correcting inconsistencies in the data. Comparisons are made, before and after corrections to the data, of take-up estimates, logistic regression take-up models and predictions of take-up responses to changes in IS rates. Overall, the corrections do not have large effects on estimated take-up rates but suggest that non-take-up is marginally less serious than the uncorrected data imply. Logistic regressions using corrected and uncorrected data were in broad agreement on the factors influencing take-up. There were some differences in the scale of these influences, with implications for predictions of take-up responses to changes in the generosity of IS. Desirable improvements in the FRS are identified.     

From Beveridge to Turner: demography, distribution and the future of pensions in the UK

Summary.  The paper outlines the recommendations of the UK Pensions Commission, and the data and analysis on which they were based, including projections of demographic change, trends in private pension saving and evolution of the State pension system. The Commission concluded that, without reform, structural problems with UK pensions would lead to increasingly inadequate and inequitable provision by 2020–2025. It recommended reforms which would lead to a more generous, more universal and less means-tested State system than would otherwise evolve, and the establishment of a low cost national pension savings scheme, into which employees without good employer provision would automatically be enrolled. The proposals, which have now largely been adopted by the UK Government, imply eventual increases both in state spending on pensions as a share of national income and in State pension age, but accompanied by measures to facilitate later and more flexible retirement.     

New Labour and Pensions Reform: Security in Retirement?

New Labour has defined the problem of security in retirement as one of undersaving and has sought to resolve it both by measures which encourage saving and by improving financial literacy. The article discusses both of these approaches, arguing that each is flawed and that, in addition, New Labour's pension policy exhibits several tensions which threaten to undermine the objective of providing a secure income in retirement.