Melbourne Law School - Research Publications

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Working at the edges of legal protection: Equality law and youth work experience from a comparative perspective

Blackham, A ; Stewart, A ; Owens, R ; O’Higgins, N ; HEWITT, A (Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, 2021)
Pensions and the Modern Workforce

Blackham, A ; Agnew, S ; Davies, P ; Mitchell, C (Hart Publishing, 2020)

Old age pensions play a fundamental role in ensuring adequacy of income for the elderly into old age. While pensions fulfil a key social and economic role, there is increasing concern that pension systems in developed countries are not sustainable in the face of demographic ageing and following poor investment returns during the financial crisis. Drawing on trends in pension law and policy in the UK and Australia, this chapter commences with a discussion of how we might conceive of pensions from a theoretical perspective (part II), and considers the emerging challenges to established pension systems from the changing nature of work and social and demographic shifts (part III). The chapter argues that existing pension systems are not yet able to accommodate the changing nature of work, and puts forward normative criteria for evaluating and developing more appropriate pension systems for the modern workforce (part IV). It then maps emerging trends in pension reform (part V), and considers the tensions that are playing out in trying to navigate these normative criteria. Part VI concludes.