ABSTRACT
The conflict over the future of old age security is a symptom of a larger conflict over the proper role of the democratic state in a market economy. As T. H. Marshall pointed out in his justly famous essay, the post-war period was a time of remarkable optimism that the traditional problems and conflicts of the capitalist democracies could be resolved and reconciled. During the decades following World War II the rapid growth in old age security entitlements in all capitalist democracies was widely hailed as a necessary, indeed inevitable, consequence of industrialization and economic growth. In the long term, the old age security systems that were the pride of the post-war welfare state were doomed to collapse under the weight of changing demographics and fiscal realities. The “crisis” of old age security had been discovered. In the conventional formulation, the crisis of old age security is explained by a rather straightforward exercise in demographic accounting.
