British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Why has it all gone wrong? The past, present and future of British pensions
Abstract
The search for security: British occupational pensions and the European equivalent
Professor Noel Whiteside (Institute of Governance and Public Management, Warwick)
British occupational pensions differ from the professional protection offered in other European countries. Yet historically most West European states shared a similar heritage: as state employees received a public pension, so some private firms offered support to selected workers too old to work. The introduction of universal state pensions following World War II did not destroy private schemes. On the contrary, they expanded and flourished. Faced with demands for higher pensions in the post-war era, many European politicians looked to occupational pensions as a means to raise old age income without increasing public expenditure.
So why did subsequent development diverge? What alternative occupational provision did other European countries create: what advantages do they offer and what lessons can be learned? Focusing on pension politics, this paper examines developments in France, the Netherlands (and, briefly, Sweden), where sophisticated systems of pooling resources fostered equity and greater pension security than in Britain. These systems command collective trust and confidence - conspicuously absent in the UK ? without which new initiatives to reform pensions will not succeed.