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- Title
A ‘most imperial’ contribution: New Zealand and the old age pensions debate in Britain, 1898–1912.
- Authors
Rogers, Edmund
- Abstract
The extent of imperial influences upon nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British life, including in the development of social policy, has attracted significant scholarly interest in the past decade. The bearing of New Zealand's 1898 Old-Age Pensions Act upon the British debate over elderly poverty exemplifies the contested transfer of social policy ideas from settler colony to ‘Mother Country’. Reformers in Britain hailed a model non-contributory pension system with an imperial pedigree. However, the widely acknowledged distinction between ‘old’ countries such as Britain, and ‘new’ countries of English-speaking settlement, characterized the New Zealand example's reception. While progressives identified the colony as a ‘clean slate’ lacking the obstructive historical inheritance of the Poor Law, critics of state-funded pensions warned against drawing policy-making lessons from New Zealand. Yet when a reformist Liberal government introduced an Old Age Pensions Bill in 1908, it used Britain's age to justify the legislation's relative conservatism.
- Subjects
PENSION laws; NEW Zealand history -- 1876-1918; SOCIAL policy in British colonies; NEW Zealand politics &; government; RETIREMENT laws; SOCIAL policy -- History; HISTORY
- Publication
Journal of Global History, 2014, Vol 9, Issue 2, p189
- ISSN
1740-0228
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S1740022814000035