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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Charity or entitlement?
— generational habitus and the welfare state among older people in north-east England | | Author(s) | Suzanne Moffatt, Paul Higgs |
| Journal title | Social Policy & Administration, vol 41, no 5, October 2007 |
| Pages | pp 449-464 |
| Keywords | Poor elderly ; Social security benefits ; Claims [services] ; Rights [elderly] ; Citizenship ; Qualitative Studies ; North East England. |
| Annotation | Current UK policies aimed at reducing pensioner poverty involve targeting those in greatest need by supplementing their incomes with means-tested welfare benefits. It is believed that such policies provide more resources for those in greatest need. However, non-uptake of state welfare benefits by many older UK citizens exacerbates the widening income gap between the richest and poorest pensioners. The underlying beliefs and discourses are examined among those currently in retirement who lived through a time when welfare programmes had more a putative abstract universalism than is now the case. Based on the narratives of people aged over 60 in north-east England, the collective forces of structure and individual practice are shown in relation to welfare accumulate over a lifetime and influence the ways in which people interact with the welfare system in later life. It is found that the reasons for the apparent lack of agency among older people in relation to claiming benefit entitlements are linked to the particular social, economic and political circumstances which have prevailed at various points prior to and since the inception of the UK welfare state. It is argued that the failure of some older citizens to operate as citizen consumers can be conceptualised in terms of a generational welfare "habitus", the consequences of which are likely to exacerbate inequalities in later life. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070927209 A |
| Classmark | F:W6: JH: QLT: IKR: IKC: 3DP: 82NE |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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