For those not of a nervous disposition - try visiting
www.lse.u-net.com/PENSIONS.htm

You'll find fourteen papers that I've written over the years on pensions
- public/private/occupational, social security and tax systems etc.  I'm
particularly interested in finding any collaborator(s) who feels that
the arguments made here are still valid - but could help me update the
figures ?  Please get in touch !
Mike
Mike Reddin
(formerly, Lecturer in Social Policy, LSE)
ph: +44 20 8544 0324   mobile: 0771 314 7351

email:   [log in to unmask]               Web: Home page :
www.lse.u-net.com
email:   [log in to unmask]


Pensions and Income Maintenance Policies
The fourteen papers which follow, presented in their published
chronological order from the late 1960s to the very early 1990s - seem
to have a (depressingly) contemporary relevance to the current debate on
UK pension policy. Certainly, all of the issues which they seek to
address are 'mentioned' - some extensively, some flittingly, in our
latest Pensions Green Paper and associated Tax White Paper.
1. 'Some Relationships between Income Taxation and Social Security' is a
paper delivered to the International Social Security Association at a
conference in Vienna in 1969. It represents a first venture into the
(murky) actual and potential interactions of personal tax, social
security and private benefit systems.
2. 'National Insurance and Private Pensions: Who Gets What from Whom?'
was a first attempt (as a Chapter in 'The Year Book of Social Policy,
1976') to explore the frequently bizarre and often unexpected
contributory/benefit relationships within British social insurance and,
in contrast, in the world of private personal and occupational pensions.
It considered, in particular, the respective treatment of the employed
vs. the self-employed, the single vs. the married and 'the dependant'.
It charts the directions of the redistributions which flowed from such
contributory / beneficiary relations.
3. 'Sex Equality and the Pension Age' was written in 1978 in response to
some of the recommendations of the Equal Opportunities Commission'
report on that subject in 1977. Again, I have let the piece stand - with
the calculations based on then contemporary data - since the core
arguments hold. I'll add some data from 2001 shortly since development's
in women's earnings and their labour market/pension participation have
alternately aggravated and then diminished some of the disparities.
4. 'Social Security and the Self Employed' was written as two articles
for the journal 'New Society' in August 1978 - in the wake of further
social security reform. In my view, this further relegated the
self-employed (and the 'self-employment' of regularly employed workers)
to the margins of the social security system - suggesting they pursue
private solutions (already found wanting) to their future income
maintenance needs. The 'inclusivity' of social security policies seemed
to me a valuable objective, a measure of the flexibility and 'choice'
that could be incorporated within a collective framework; to abandon
those failing to conform to a world of "full-time / continuing / 40 hour
week full employment" seemed a dangerous precedent then - and, now
multiplied.
5. 'A Most Peculiar Partnership: State, Occupation and Personal Pensions
in the UK' first saw life as a paper to the President's Commission on
Pension Policy (the President was Jimmy Carter) in Washington DC, 1980.
In an attenuated English version but more fully in Hebrew it then
appeared in Social Security: the Journal of the National Insurance
Institute, Jerusalem, November 1981. The version offered here was much
extended in 1988. Its arguments on public/private partnerships, and
doubting the prospect of pension salvation via funding and an
occupational base, seem singularly contemporary in their concerns. 
6. 'Occupation, Welfare and Social Division' was written as a chapter
for 'The Year Book of Social Policy in Britain, 1980/81. It reviews the
case for - but predominantly against - using 'occupation' as a base for
the provision of welfare benefits. It considers the consequences,
particularly for pensions, of going down the occupational welfare
pathway - and argues that we should break the benefit/occupation link
with all speed.
7. 'Getting On' - Occupational Pensions - was written as a 'script' for
an episode of a weekly TV programme called 'Getting On' produced by
Central TV in the early 1980s. This episode explored the growing
provision of occupational schemes in the UK, commented critically on the
reality of that apparent growth - and added some Information Notes, as
part of the extensive post-programme response to the large number of
correspondents.
8. 'Retirement Policy : Commentary' - this brief article was presented
as one of a collection of 'commentaries' in a book edited by Michael
Fogarty called "Retirement Policy: the next fifty years". My own paper
offered a critique of a substantial report by Richard Hemming and John
Kay which, in my view, seemed to have fallen for the merits of funded
occupational pensions hook, line and sinker. I begged to differ.
9. 'Taxations and Pensions' is a chapter from 'Taxation and Social
Policy' (edited by Cedric Sandford, Chris Pond and Robert Walker) in
1981. It explores the intricate inter-relationships between the UK
systems of personal taxation and the treatment of state, occupational
and private pensions, the ways in which taxation has shaped and defined
pension policies - and vice-versa. The arguments hold true - and are as
problematic (and I believe, neglected) - in the 2003 White Paper on
Taxation and Pensions Policy.
10. 'Income Maintenance in a Cold Climate' was written as a chapter for
a book edited by Prof John Griffith 'Socialism in a Cold Climate'
published in 1983. It was written whilst teaching as a Visiting
Associate Professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem - in the
Spring/Summer of 1982. In the distinctly hostile climate of a very
Conservative Britain my co-authors and I reviewed the prospects for
social and political change within that singularly 'cold political
climate'. It is interesting how similar they seem to be to the
constraints on policy change in 2003.
11. 'Pensions, Wealth and Inequality' appeared in 1983, a chapter in
'The Wealth Report 2' edited by Frank Field, a contribution to one of
his series of reviews of wealth and inequality in Britain the in the
1980s. It was another look at the ways in which we calculate what
pensions are 'worth' to those who have them and, not least, another
attempt to identify just who it is that pays for the pensions benefits
that we (or rather, some of us) receive.
12. 'Beveridge, Fowler and the 'New Minimalism' first appeared in the
Times Higher Education Supplement in 1984 in the wake of the publication
of a series of major Reviews of the UK social security system by the
then Secretary of State for Social Security, Norman Fowler. I was
fascinated by the parallels which Mrs Thatcher's government drew with
the Beveridge Report of 1942. I sought to push the juxtaposition of
their ideas (Beveridge and Fowler) somewhat further and am now again
overwhelmed by the similarity of argument - and shared misunderstandings
- of those Reviews of the early 1990's with those of 2002.
13. 'Can We Afford Our Future?' was written as a booklet for Age Concern
in 1985. It was an attempt to sum up all of the resources committed to
providing incomes in old age - juxtaposing public, occupational, private
pensions, life insurance and personal savings with the comparatively
small sums committed to the state retirement pension - and proposing
some better ways of spending such substantial sums.
14. 'UK Pension Policy: pursuit of the Lowest Common Denominator' was
given as a paper (in English) and published (in French) in the
Proceedings of the Conference on 'Professional Occupational Mobility and
Pensions' of the Fondation Europe et Societe, in Paris June 1991. I
think my translators were generous in calming the tone of this brief
'rant'. I argued that the very diversity and variety of the UK's private
and occupation pension partners - where the State had consistently let
these partners set the pace, tone and generosity of pension benefits for
a chosen few - had seriously imperilled pensions for all in the UK. This
imbalance made us painfully problematic in any future approach toward
European benefit integration. That is, whatever our other national
social policy merits, nobody should seek to follow our messy and
inequitable example in the field of pensions.