Abstract Christina May

german version

In the last two decades the social sciences as well as the media have discussed the idea of generation as an indicator for social inequality in the welfare state. It is beyond controversy that, since the establishment of welfare states in Europe in the 1950s, different birth cohorts have had different experiences with programmes of social security. The project analyses if and how pension policy modifications influenced the formation of historical welfare generations in general and their specific experience of social security in particular. Pension systems have followed different logics of security - e.g. the security of the standard of living in contrast to the security of a subsistence level. A secondary analysis of European opinion surveys shall help to clarify if the changes in pension policies in different countries result in different generational experiences of social security. Is the imprint of these generational experiences as important as other categories of social inequality (e.g. education, income, gender)? Winner and loser generations are most notably a phenomenon of public and political debate. By means of a content analysis the project will also describe the historical change in meaning of concepts such as "generation", "pension" and "social security" in media discourses since the 1950s.