Old Age Pensions And Policy Making In Canada

Revised thesis comprising a case study of the old age benefit programme in Canada, to illustrate the political aspects and social policy decision making processes of income redistribution - includes references and statistical tables.

A miller and his son, on their way to market with their donkey, find it impossible to please everyone they meet.

Gray Agendas presents a groundbreaking, cross-national study into the complex and interdependent relationship between public policy and the interest groups of the aged. Canada, Britain, and the United States are examined and compared. This book provides a unique, in-depth understanding of how public policies have sparked the creation of organized senior citizen groups, which in turn, through their intensified political clout, have been able to shape subsequent public policy. The book begins with a historical perspective on the state's role in the lives of the aged and the indirect consequences of various policies on the elderly population, including most specifically, age group mobilization. Later, consideration is given to widespread economic, social, and ideological changes in age policy, and the effect that new interest group formation had and continues to have upon these changes. The final chapters are concerned with current issues surrounding the present density of organized age based activity, and the effects of transformed state policy on the future of interest groups for the aged. The unique topic of Gray Agendas will prove interesting not only to those interested in the fields of sociology, history, and political science, but also will help fill the gap of scholarly information on issues concerning the elderly's organizations, proving invaluable to those interested in social gerontology and related areas of study.

This paper describes what is understood as the social contract for seniors in Canada and looks critically at the key reasons that have been advanced for reviewing it at this time. It examines some of the solutions that have been proposed or implemented in other countries to deal with what some have seen as the crisis of an aging population, particularly in the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Europe, comparing the social contract with seniors in those countries with public policies for seniors in Canada. It traces the probable future direction of this social contract in light of known social, demographic, political and economic trends in Canada. It concludes with an outline of what is the most desirable future for the social contract for seniors in Canada, taking into account trends in health care, income security, employment and social services and describes how this future could be attained.