The current UK government has invested heavily in labour market activation, both as an economic and social strategy. This has resulted in the phased introduction of significant changes to welfare provision, operating alongside other activation-based initiatives, including a high-profile skills agenda, a national childcare strategy, and ‘family-friendly’ employment policies to smooth the path to paid work for those with family responsibilities. 

‘Loyalty benefits’ are transfer payments designed to motivate or reward citizens for serving the state, either tangibly or symbolically. Classic examples are benefits to soldiers and civil servants, and today, special benefits granted to political refugees.

But like the trademark social insurance schemes invented by conservative welfare states, loyalty benefits may also be used as a way of reinforcing status barriers between groups, including ethnic hierarchies embodied in the collective identity projects of states.

The new social contract aims to establish a society in which individuals can live meaningful lives. While the state enjoys the outcome of citizens’ responsible acts it has a duty to create the necessary conditions for such actions, and in so doing to close social and economic gaps between families and individuals alike.

There exists a widespread conviction that pension protection, along with many other social benefits, is slowly being eroded as responsibility for insurance and the associated costs are shifted steadily from government and employers to individual citizens and their family members.

But was there really a ‘golden age’ of pension protection? If so, what are the causes that undermined these guarantees, and what are the policy parameters and defining characteristics that have shaped pension policies during the last couple of decades?