Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- Part I The rise of pensioning
- Part II The shaping of the modern pensions institution
- 6 Accident and design in the evolution of pensions
- 7 Pensions in peril? Security, solvency and vesting
- 8 Designing the benefit structure
- 9 Retirement: age discrimination or the fruits of prosperity?
- Epilogue: Contemporary critics and the future of pensions
- Statistical appendix
- A note on sources
- Notes
- Index
6 - Accident and design in the evolution of pensions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- Part I The rise of pensioning
- Part II The shaping of the modern pensions institution
- 6 Accident and design in the evolution of pensions
- 7 Pensions in peril? Security, solvency and vesting
- 8 Designing the benefit structure
- 9 Retirement: age discrimination or the fruits of prosperity?
- Epilogue: Contemporary critics and the future of pensions
- Statistical appendix
- A note on sources
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The process should be one of continual experiment, with those innovations that prove most generally acceptable and fitted to employees' needs, gaining ground at the expense of less satisfactory systems. It is in its capacity for continual adaptation to changing circumstances that the strength of the occupational pension movement is most evident …
National Association of Pension Funds, The Future Relationship of State and Occupational Pension Funds, 1968, p. 24The narrative of the growth of occupational pensions in the previous five chapters has shown the twentieth-century development of the system to be driven by three powerful forces: the desire for old age saving, becoming more insistent with increased longevity and greatly reinforced in recent decades by the tax advantages of pension saving; the political drive for adequate pensioning, defined originally in terms of poverty relief but ending with comprehensive income replacement objectives; and the evolving nature of the employment relationship in large bureaucratic enterprises. The latter was a major factor in the early growth of pension schemes, but the tax benefits of pension saving and the conditions for contracting out of the state pension scheme have more recently made the advantages of schemes less exclusive to large employers (and in some respects less attractive to any employer) than they were in earlier decades. The focus of the first part of this book has been on the interplay of these three forces and their impact on the growing coverage of occupational pension schemes, particularly in the private sector.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Inventing RetirementThe Development of Occupational Pensions in Britain, pp. 85 - 90Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986