ABSTRACT
Postwar demographic experience has done much to undermine the rather apocalyptic views expressed in the 1930s on the effects of a stagnant or declining population. The UK population has continued to grow from census to census, but once again the picture has been more varied at regional level. Class-based, or ‘solidaristic’ forms of social and political consciousness have given way to the values of individualism and the search for private and personal satisfactions. The force of international competition which has ‘alienated’ workers from their work has also produced disillusion with the politics of reform and intervention. Mortality is higher for males than for females at every age group with the result that the elderly comprise a disproportionate number of single or widowed women. This gender imbalance has important implications for social policy. Postwar governments have been increasingly keen to encourage the growth of occupational pensions as a supplement to the basic state pension.
