Social policy, labour markets and retirement: some issues from Europe

Commonly across European countries the origins of their welfare states were associated with arrangements for protecting and supporting financially people whose period of waged labour had come to an end. In the preceding period workers often had to continue working until their health failed them, but from the end of the nineteenth century onwards European governments began to establish formal retirement ages, the age at which the worker withdrew from waged employment, allied to arrangements for ensuring their financial support. The fact that policies toward older people were in many countries seminal might be regarded as quite naturaltheir needs are obvious, they will generally be considered deserving and the state of being old is, of course, one we all expect hope some day to attain. Yet, as Catherine Jones Finer has suggested there has developed a paradox in that, writing in the mid 1990s, it was apparent that the just claims and desserts of older people were being widely and openly debated. In Europe and beyond it was no longer taken as self-evident that they had a prior claim over society\u27s resources and there have been many attempts to restructure the nature of state policies (Jones Finer 1996). If the point of observation is shifted toward a Marxist one, however, there is little if any substance to the paradox. Phillipson (1982: 3) takes the stance that "capitalism has a distinct set of priorities which almost always relegates social and individual needs behind the search for profits and the maintenance of defence and of law and order" . He argues that issues of the age and terms of retirement are less to do with needs and just desserts of individuals or even groups of workers and more with the requirements of capital at specific times and locations. He argues, further, that older people have in practice been (Copied from article)