State Legislation and the Elderly

Abstract

In Chapter 3 it was argued that the growth in the elderly population had posed important dilemmas concerning the national distribution of economic resources. It was suggested that despite the emergence of retirement, there remained a flexible policy concerning the socially acceptable time to retire, the acceptability of retirement shifting with changes in the economy, assumptions about the ‘burden’ of elderly people, and changes in the supply of young ‘productive’ workers. In this chapter I wish to examine how these changes have affected social policies towards older people. Can similar movements be traced in the emergence of a concept of care and support for older people as has been identified in the case of retirement? Have policies of care developed by consensus and evolutionary growth, or has their emergence been marked by contradiction and dissension?¹