A New Pension Settlement For The Twenty First Century

The Pensions Commission is an independent body established by the Government to review the adequacy of current arrangements for private pensions and retirement savings in the UK and to make recommendations on appropriate policy changes, including the option of moving to a compulsory system. Following on from its first report (ISBN 0117027804) published in October 2004, this second report sets out the Commission's conclusions on the likely evolution of the UK pension system if policy is unchanged, and makes recommendations for a new policy direction. Recommendations are based on two key elements: the automatic enrolment of employees into either a new National Pensions Savings System or into existing company pension schemes, with an option for employees to opt-out, and with a modest compulsory employer matching contribution; and reform of state pension provision in order to make it simpler to understand and less means-tested. The Commission concludes that these reforms will require some increase in public expenditure on pensions as a percentage of GDP over the next 45 years, and that increases in state pension ages will be needed to keep that increase within sustainable levels over the long term. The Commission presents a range of possible combinations of public expenditure and state pensions ages, and calls for a public debate to consider these options. It also recommends the establishment of a successor body to continue to review the situation and report to Parliament and government every four years.

The Pensions Commission is an independent body established by the Government to review the adequacy of current arrangements for private pensions and retirement savings in the UK and to make recommendations on appropriate policy changes, including the option of moving to a compulsory system. The Commission's second report sets out its conclusions on the likely evolution of the UK pension system if policy is unchanged, and makes recommendations for a new policy direction. This publication contains the appendices to the second report, including an update on data developments related to pensions policy, as well as information on analysis, research and consultation responses.

The Pensions Commission is an independent body established by the Government to review the adequacy of current arrangements for private pensions and retirement savings in the UK and to make recommendations on appropriate policy changes, including the option of moving to a compulsory system. Following on from its first report (ISBN 0117027804) published in October 2004, this second report sets out the Commission's conclusions on the likely evolution of the UK pension system if policy is unchanged, and makes recommendations for a new policy direction. Recommendations are based on two key elements: the automatic enrolment of employees into either a new National Pensions Savings System or into existing company pension schemes, with an option for employees to opt-out, and with a modest compulsory employer matching contribution; and reform of state pension provision in order to make it simpler to understand and less means-tested. The Commission concludes that these reforms will require some increase in public expenditure on pensions as a percentage of GDP over the next 45 years, and that increases in state pension ages will be needed to keep that increase within sustainable levels over the long term. The Commission presents a range of possible combinations of public expenditure and state pensions ages, and calls for a public debate to consider these options. It also recommends the establishment of a successor body to continue to review the situation and report to Parliament and government every four years.

Women born in mid twentieth-century Britain were the 'welfare state generation' – not only were their lives fundamentally shaped by the welfare state, they helped to transform it. In this ground-breaking work, Eve Worth examines the impact of the welfare state on the life course of women whose opportunities and social experiences were formed by it in the post-1945 period. Centred around an oral history study, this book argues that the welfare state was so central to the lives of women born in Britain between the late 1930s and early 1950s that they should be considered the 'welfare state generation'. The post-war expansion of the welfare state was one of the most transformative political changes of the twentieth century, yet we know little about its development in practice, nor its long-term impact on those who grew up within it. Using a ground-breaking life history methodology to examine women from their birth in the long 1940s to retirement in the mid-2010s, it includes thirty-six original life history interviews alongside social surveys and the Census for wider context By deploying a cross-class approach, this book moves the discussion on from just looking at university-educated women, to include women often overlooked in gender and social studies. Re-conceptualising the causes of social mobility in post-war Britain, exploring a new understanding of work and an updated periodisation of welfare state development, The Welfare State Generation offers a new approach to the history of class and gender, arguing that we need to move beyond the focus on women's emotions and personal identity, to consider their experiences and relationships with the state as employer, educator and provider.

Mandatory pensions are a worldwide phenomenon. However, with fixed contribution rates, monthly benefits, and retirement ages, pension systems are not consistent with three long-run trends: declining mortality, declining fertility, and earlier retirement. Many systems need reform. This book gives an extensive nontechnical explanation of the economics of pension design. The theoretical arguments have three elements: * Pension systems have multiple objectives--consumption smoothing, insurance, poverty relief, and redistribution. Good policy needs to bear them all in mind. * Good analysis should be framed in a second-best context-- simple economic models are a bad guide to policy design in a world with imperfect information and decision-making, incomplete markets and taxation. * Any choice of pension system has risk-sharing and distributional consequences, which the book recognizes explicitly. Barr and Diamond's analysis includes labor markets, capital markets, risk sharing, and gender and family, with comparison of PAYG and funded systems, recognizing that the suitable level of funding differs by country. Alongside the economic principles of good design, policy must also take account of a country's capacity to implement the system. Thus the theoretical analysis is complemented by discussion of implementation, and of experiences, both good and bad, in many countries, with particular attention to Chile and China.