ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social “intergenerational” contract that lies at the heart of all western welfare state regimes and the changes it is undergoing currently. The two sections of the chapter reflect the conceptual distinction between macro-age cohorts and microsocial roles within families outlined in the introduction. In the first section it is argued that while the classic “problem of generations” (Bengston 1993) is concerned with relations within families, the late twentieth century is witnessing the emergence of a wholly new problem between age cohorts and the main battleground is the distributory mechanisms of the traditional welfare state. A new contract is being forged between the age cohorts of workers and pensioners. Secondly, this new contract between age cohorts and the restructuring of welfare systems that lies behind it have profound implications for generational relations within families, especially when coupled, as they are, with the dramatic increases in life expectancy during the twentieth century. Thus it is argued that the new contract between age cohorts is at odds with the changes taking place in generational relations within families.
