Active Ageing, Pensions and Retirement in the UK

Abstract

The ageing population has led to increasing concerns about pensions and their future sustainability. Much of the dominant policy discourse around ageing and pension provision over the last decade has focussed on postponing retirement and prolonging employment. These measures are central to productive notions of ‘active ageing’. Initially the paper briefly sets out the pension developments in the UK. Then it introduces active ageing and active ageing policy, exploring its implications for UK pension provision. It demonstrates that a more comprehensive active ageing framework, which incorporates a life-course perspective, has the potential to assist the UK to respond to the challenges of an ageing population. In doing so it needs to highlight older people as an economic and social resource, and reduce barriers to older people’s participation in society.

Culture, ageing and the construction of pain

“…Certainly the discourse of, 'active ageing' frequently locates the responsibility of physical and mental well-being in later life with the individual. While this ideology can be useful for 'challenging views of older age as characterised by passivity and dependency' (Foster, 2017, no page), other authors have expressed concern that it is developing into a moral discourse of responsibility, even though many older people, especially those living with a disability, or are too poor to buy into 'healthy lifestyle choices', will not be able to achieve active ageing and longer working lives (Van Dyk , Lessenich and Denninger et al 2013). …”

People with learning disabilities and ‘active ageing’

“…Active ageing emerged at a period when the issue of 'global greying' led to the dismantling of traditional conceptions of the life course which equated the oldest phase of life with inactivity (Boudiny & Mortelmans, 2011). For instance, the abolition of the default retirement age of 65 in 2012 in the UK has led to a blurring of age-related retirement (Foster, 2012). Older people have played an important role in direct action in the form of protests against cuts in pensions, health and social services .…”

“…In the UK, policy discourse has largely conformed to this approach by encouraging delayed retirement in a number of ways including increases in the age at which the state pension will be received and the abolition of the default retirement age. In addition, tighter eligibility for disability benefits (from 1995), in-work benefits and training incentives targeted at unemployed people over the age of 50, such as the New Deal 50 Plus (from 2002), are strategies to encourage older workers' employment (Banks & Smith, 2006;Foster, 2012). Although some policy documents, including those produced by the European Union (EU) consider a wider range of provision, such as lifelong learning, engaging in capacity-enhancing and health-promoting activities, and being active after retirement (CEC 2002), the aim is largely to extend the working lives of older people (Hamblin, 2010) and reflect employment targets in relation to older people (Zaidi & Zolyomi, 2011), thus excluding the majority of people with learning disabilities who have never been active in the labour market.…”

Women millennials’ perceptions of pension savings through the use of autoenrollment in the UK pension system

“…The notion of a 'demographic time bomb' focuses on the expanding number of older people reliant on pension schemes as a direct result of demographic transitions, and the pressures this will present for the working age population. However, age-based measures overestimate the challenge to pension sustainability, as they ignore relevant changes such as the increase in women's employment, in state pension age (SPA), and in labor productivity (Foster, 2018). However, the term has also been utilized by neoliberal policy makers, who state that it is leading to unaffordable public spending.…”