Structural Contingencies: The Marketization of Private Pensions in America since the New Deal

• In Event: 212 - Regular Session. Comparative Historical Sociology: Historical Perspectives on State Policy Innovation

Abstract

Prominent accounts of welfare change have too limiting a view of the constraints imposed on policymakers by capitalism itself. This paper shows how capitalism bore on pension marketization in the US by comparing two historical episodes of change. The provisioning of American retirement income underwent significant marketization in two periods since the New Deal, between 1945 and 1960 and since the late 1970s. In the first episode, collectively bargained private pensions were adopted as an alternative to Social Security expansions. And in the second, defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, came to replace these traditional plans. Both developments elevated the role of market forces in the distribution of retirement income. This article develops the structural contingency approach to policy change by identifying three interrelated causes of both shifts. First, in each episode state intervention into labor-management relations triggered the change. Second, policymakers were motivated to intervene primarily because of a structural condition – to manage perceived crises in capitalism, not to secure a certain vision of old-age retirement. And third, the particular way they intervened and how their policy choices spurred pension marketization was driven by contingent historical circumstances within each juncture.

Author

• Michael A. McCarthy, Marquette University