ABSTRACT
In 1949 the Royal Commission on Population delivered its report on the long-term future of the population of Great Britain. The background to the work of the Commission was the concern, expressed throughout the 1930s and 1940s, about the possible dangers arising from the ageing of the population. In this debate older people were depicted as a burden on society; a group with the potential for reducing the living standards of the nation and increasing the financial pressures on future generations of workers. The Royal Commission expressed particular anxiety about the conflict of interest between workers and pensioners. The basis for this concern was expressed in the Commission’s view that:
. . . if all the old sit back on their first pensionable birthday and draw a pension with which they compete for consumer goods made by a decreasing section of the population, the standard of life of both generations will inevitably be endangered. (Royal Commission on Population 1949)
The concept of generations competing over scarce resources was underplayed during the 1950s and 1960s in Britain which, in common with many other industrial societies, fashioned new approaches to the provision of welfare (Lowe 1993). However, by the 1970s and 1980s, the notion of generational conflict was back on the political agenda and had become a major topic of debate within and beyond the gerontological community (Easterlin 1978, Clark & Spengler 1980, Foote 1982, Longman 1987, Johnson et al. 1989, Phillipson 1990, Walker 1990a, Hobman 1993).