Introduction

After 1945, life expectancy in Britain continued to rise, partly because of the benefits of the ‘welfare state’, full employment, and the revolution in medical science. While the population as a whole grew, those over 65 years constituted a slowly increasing proportion of the total. In terms of welfare provision, the restructuring of the national insurance scheme in the late 1940s proved problematic. The value of the contributory pension, in any event designed as a subsistence award, was declining thanks to inflation. The scheme's flat-rate basis further exacerbated the issue of the pension's value. Many pensioners remained victims of poverty, and so were increasingly reliant on means-tested awards. The whole structure had shaky actuarial foundations in that pensions were paid for not by historic contributions but effectively by younger workers. Entitlement to a state pension came at 65 years for men and 60 for women, ages which had no particular economic or medical rationale but which were apparently fixed and inflexible. Although legislated for by a Labour government, there was nothing especially ‘socialist’ about the pensions scheme. Rather, it embodied Beveridge's liberalism.

Thus policy challenges persisted. The incoming 1951 Conservative government considered whether targeted, rather than universal, benefits were the way forward. And as John Macnicol points out, the 1950s saw a ‘small but growing lobby of free market opinion … arguing that state pension ages should be raised’. By such accounts, expenditure on pensions was ‘dysfunctional’ as it did not ‘invest in youthful human capital’. Rather, it ‘diverted resources to a non-working, unproductive section of the population’ which consumed, rather than produced, wealth. Titmuss became heavily engaged with these issues, coming to be seen as an expert on pensions policy, and in the 1950s in particular worked extensively on the subject. This chapter's aim is not to deal with every article or memorandum in an often abstruse and technical field. Rather, it seeks to show how Titmuss contributed to broader debates about the place of, and support for, old people in society.

The employment of older people

In 1951, the Conservative government set up the Advisory Committee on the Employment of Older Men and Women under the supervision of the Ministry of Labour and National Service.