Michael Hill 
Pensions [PDF ebook] 

This book provides a much-needed introductory guide to the issues surrounding pension policy, not just in the UK but worldwide, and offers a critique of some of the dominant ideas and assumptions. Noting the intense debate that currently surrounds the subject, the book explores a wider view of the continuing issues about pension policy.
It draws attention to an ideological ‘fault-line’ running through pensions policy, between a dominant view of pensions as deferred earnings on the one hand and a view of them as providers of an adequate income to enable elderly people to participate fully in society on the other. It argues for more attention to that second perspective, as an aspect of the search for a satisfactory work/ life balance.
Critical of the many ‘quick fix’ approaches to the topic, the author attacks ‘the demographic time bomb thesis’ for its crude assumptions about the future burden of the old and exposes naïve assumptions about what can be achieved by pension funding.
This book offers an excellent analysis for the general reader and provides an authoritative supplementary text for courses in social policy.
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Table of Content

Introduction: pension policy aims and pathways; UK pension policies: a historical account; Pension scheme adequacy; Alternative pension models; Pension age and retirement age; The alleged ‘demographic time bomb’; Facing the future: the funding obsession; Pension reform.

About the author

Michael Hill is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Newcastle University and a Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton. Having written on many aspects of the policy process and social policy, he is author of The Public Policy Process, Implementing Public Policy (with Peter Hupe), Understanding Social Policy (with Zoë Irving) and editor of Studying Public Policy (2014). In 2009 he was given the Social Policy Association’s lifetime award.