ABSTRACT
All societies have to solve two basic problems concerning old age: how to provide incomes for elderly people who no longer draw earnings from work, and how to provide care for older people who are disabled and no longer self-sufficient. During the post-war period of prosperity European societies could for many years rely on a rather well-established division of labour between the generations. The population at working age financed fairly generous pay-as-you-go pension schemes, as a combination of full employment, high birthrates, and sizeable productivity gains helped to ease the burden of financing and allowed the raising of pensions to levels which considerably alleviated the problem of poverty in old age. 2 Care needs were traditionally covered within the extended family system where a fairly large generation of adult and usually female care workers provided for a relatively small generation of elderly parents.
