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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Never had it so good?
— Boom time for older people | | Author(s) | Angus Hanton, Liz Emerson |
| Journal title | Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, vol 16, no 1, 2015 |
| Publisher | Emerald, 2015 |
| Pages | pp 18-21 |
| Source | www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/qaoa.htm |
| Keywords | Income [older people] ; Cost of living ; Wealth ; Social economics ; Older people ; Young adults [20-25] ; Social policy. |
| Annotation | Although it masy be welcome, increased longevity has far-reaching implications for the social contract between generations. These include eye-watering costs for health and social care, intense pressure on the old-age dependency ratio, changing power relations in politics and voting, and increasing pressure on in-work families. In a period of austerity, policy makers have chosen to protect older generations' benefits, and have paid for this by slashing benefits for the young, despite growing evidence that wealth distribution has changed, with older generations becoming wealthier than once thought. This discussion paper maintains that age alone can no longer be used as a proxy for need, and aims to discuss these issues. It uses original quantitative research and analysis undertaken by the Intergenerational Foundation (IF) (www.if.org.uk), which includes Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to government departments. It brings together the think tank's research into demographics, ageing, policy, government debt and liabilities, benefit reform and spending patterns, in order to investigate the changing distribution of wealth across the generations. It is clear that with changing distributions of wealth that age alone can no longer be used as a proxy for need. While older generations are becoming wealthier, younger generations are becoming increasingly burdened by debt, with poorer prospects and being asked to maintain the current status quo. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170519226 A |
| Classmark | JF: J3C: W7: W4: B: SD6: TM2 |
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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