nine - The United Kingdom – a new moral imperative: live longer, work longer

Summary

Introduction

The UK's focus very much encapsulates the economic and moral imperatives to extend working lives outlined in Chapters One to Three. Against a background of population ageing and concerns over the funding of state pensions and elder-care costs, successive UK governments have clearly voiced an expectation of working longer. The discourse has changed over time, from reversing early retirement, to extending working lives, to, most recently, encouraging fuller working lives (DWP, 2014a; Altmann, 2015). However, the intention remains firmly focused on delaying permanent withdrawal from paid work. In the last 15 years, policy changes with impacts on later working lives have multiplied, but as Phillipson, Vickerstaff and Lain (2016) note: ‘Apart from the general expression of the desirability of encouraging people to delay retirement and extend their working lives, the many initiatives … cannot be said to have been part of a coordinated strategy.’ Gaining momentum, however, is the ‘common-sense’ view that as we live longer, we should work longer, coupled with increasing talk of intergenerational inequality. As a result, there is a growing tendency for public discussion of extending working lives to take a strong moral tone, placing an emphasis on the responsibility of older age groups to carry on in paid work to pay for their retirement.

There has been legislation prohibiting discrimination on grounds of age since 2006, followed by the subsequent abolition of a default retirement age in April 2011. The age of eligibility for the state old-age pension is rising to 67 and is set to increase further to 68 or possibly beyond while changes to benefit and pension regimes (to be discussed in detail later) have moved to discouraging early retirement or access to ill-health or disability pathways out of work. At the same time, there has also been some emphasis on active, supply-side, labour market policies that encourage or subsidise long-term economically inactive people back into work, such as making work pay through tax incentives. These policies are firmly situated in the neoliberal discourse of helping individuals to help themselves. Emphasis is placed on individuals’ responsibility, planning and choice:

These measures help everyone to take responsibility for their retirement income, to move away from the idea of a cliff-edge retirement that is inevitable at a given age, and ensure they plan for a retirement that is based on personal circumstance and choice. (DWP, 2014a: 3)