The Decline of Social Welfare: Falling State Support for the Elderly since Early Victorian Times

ABSTRACT Current searchings for ways to trim a burgeoning social welfare budget come at the end of a long period of decline in the value of pensions. The social welfare benefits paid in Britain today are not as valuable, relative to the incomes of non-beneficiaries, as were the pensions paid during the first half of the twentieth century, and they are worth very much less than the allowances distributed by the nineteenth century Poor Law. Demographic changes, including the growing numbers of elderly persons, the movement of elderly persons towards living alone, the decline in household size, and the return of large numbers of women to the paid workforce, have overtaken the Welfare State, which has failed to develop a programme for redistributing resources between the generations.