Class, gender and chance: the social division of welfare and the occupational pensions in the UK
Meyer, T. and Bridgen, P. (2007) Class, gender and chance: the social division of welfare and the occupational pensions in the UK. Ageing and Society
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Description/Abstract
The social division of welfare literature has emphasized the extent to which occupational pension provision is distributed on the basis of class and gender. However, as most previous commentators have at least implicitly recognized, a significant proportion of the less advantaged groups are covered. This paper argues that patterns of access among this group, and their distributional consequences, must be considered more systematically, and that in this context, the diversity of employers’ pension schemes must be investigated. On this basis, it emerges that while the spread of occupational provision beyond the most privileged workers means that some vulnerable individuals will avoid poverty in retirement, the main determinant of who escapes and who does not among this group is chance. Thus, while class and gender remain important predictors of occupational pension access, access for those in the disadvantaged group arises mainly as an accident of an employment decision made for reasons unrelated to savings or pensions criteria. This situation the paper argues, makes unsustainable justice-based arguments currently used by policy-makers to justify the distribution of UK pension income. The paper finishes by discussing the implications of these findings for recent UK policy developments and international debates about pension reform.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | |
| ISSN: | 0144-686 (print) |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | social, division, welfare, occupational, pensions, justice, Titmuss, chance |
| Related URLs: | http://www.socsci.soton.ac.uk/...Discipline |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races H Social Sciences > HG Finance H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) |
| Divisions: | University Structure - Pre August 2011 > School of Social Sciences > Sociology and Social Policy |
| ePrint ID: | 42817 |
| URI: | http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/42817 |
| Deposited On: | 12 Jan 2007 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Mar 2012 12:07 |
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