The final task of this book is to draw together the key features of theapproaches set out in the preceding chapters and to show how these can bereconciled with a revised version of the SDW. Hopefully, this will bothguide the reader as they rethink retirement, and highlight the social,ethical and political questions that need to be considered.

Before a reconstructed account of the SDW is attempted, it is important toacknowledge the continuing significance of the key points Titmuss made inthe 1950s:

• • public welfare is not the only form that welfare takes andthose that assume it is are either mischievous, or naive;

• • welfare dependency affects everyone and is a feature of alldeveloped societies;

• • interdependency is unavoidable;

• • social divisions in retirement are directly related to theSDW and to the forms of welfare social groups can access;

• • trying to ensure social justice and equity between thedifferent forms of welfare that exist is a legitimate goal.

Although the SDW remains an adaptable mid-range theory, Titmuss’sversion, however, has to be heavily revised along the lines set out inChapter One (Sinfield, 1978; Rose, 1981). Titmuss’s functionalistperspective simply fails to explain the development of dependency andinterdependency, but that has been addressed earlier and at length elsewhere(Mann, 1992). Above all else, the SDW has to take on board feministcritiques and locate informal welfare alongside occupational, fiscal andpublic provisions. That does not mean that informal welfare accounts for allthe blatant and persistent gender divisions among the retired population. Onthe contrary, there are profound gender divisions in respect of each aspectof the SDW. Informal welfare also plays a major part in the pattern ofinequality within the other elements of the SDW. But informal welfare isdistinctive because there are very few formal mechanisms that can compensateproviders for the loss of retirement and pensions rights. Nor is the lawnecessarily the solution. For example, splitting pensions on divorce islikely to generate nightmares for actuaries, with minor improvements forsome women, but substantial legal fees for lawyers (PensionsWorld, April 2001). Moreover, lone mothers and working-classwomen whose spouses do not have occupational or private pensions, will stillhave to rely on means-tested, increasingly residualised, public welfare whenthey retire.