Class Differences in Pension System Integration

Abstract

Social rights, understood as the right to some economic security independent of the market, are not a twentieth century invention. Historically, they were rooted in membership of the village community, the town and the guild. (Proto-)industrialization dissolved these social rights until nothing remained but the old poor laws, which treated the claims of the poor not as a part of their citizenship rights, but as an alternative to them (Marshall, 1981 [1950]: 9). At the end of the nineteenth century, the poor houses were slowly substituted by state-led welfare programs which re-established the notion of social rights. By providing basic income schemes, these welfare states permit people to make their living standard, to some extent, independent from pure market forces (Esping-Andersen, 1990: 3). Moreover, through their impact on market outcomes, they are likely to alter stratification as it ensues from differences in employment relationships (Korpi and Palme, 2003: 428). In the context of our study, the focus lies on this feature of welfare statism: the (de-)stratifying impact of social programmes that may weaken (but possibly also strengthen) the hierarchy resulting from the labour market. Hence, we wish to find out to what degree class differences in the occupational system are reflected in differences in the integration into the pension system.