ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on community care and considers the financial position of older people in the UK with a focus upon state provision. It outlines the development of pension policy and discusses the labour market, family values and support, and public expenditure. The Social Security Pensions Act 1975 created the state earnings related pensions scheme (SERPS), and the structure of the retirement pension system operating today. Annual indexation of the Basic Pension was based upon the retail prices index or earnings. Moreover, older people in the UK are less well off than their counterparts in other leading industrial societies. Among the poorest older people in the UK there are just under one million living on incomes below the Income Support levels. It is clear that changes in the nature of retirement, both as a concept and as a process in the late twentieth century, together with the changing demographic processes mentioned earlier, require policymakers to rethink pension policy.
