Wednesday 20 September 2006
6:00pm – 8:00pm
The Retirement Years: An Uncertain Future?
Daiwa Foundation Japan House
Organised by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in association with The Japan Society
This seminar will look to the Baby Boomer generations in the UK and Japan and their changing expectations of the future as they approach retirement and old age. Pension reform and health and social welfare issues dominate international headlines. How the British and the Japanese are facing up to working longer or differently, retiring later and sustaining themselves financially and physically into old age raises many questions. To what extent are current pension reform proposals offering viable solutions? Can the state respond adequately to the healthcare needs of rapidly ageing societies? Our speakers will offer expert perspectives on the retirement years in the UK and Japan.
About the contributors
Yukiko Kudo
Yukiko Kudo is a Research Advisor at the International Longevity Centre Japan and a Senior Specialist at the Ministry of Education, Science, Sport and Culture. She has written extensively on active living, pension provision and the changing nature of households. Her current research projects include population ageing and community care, the ecological approach of care, and the World Cities Project on Health and Long Term Care System.
John Hills
John Hills is a Professor of Social Policy and Director of the ESRC Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics. He was a member of the UK Pensions Commission from 2003-2006; a member of the Steering Committee on ‘Taking Forward the EU Social Inclusion Process’ for the Luxemburg Presidency, 2003-04; and a member of the Office for National Statistics Review of Income Statistics, 2001-2004. He is currently a member of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Welfare Reform Advisors Forum. He has published extensively on issues connected with income distribution, public finance, social security systems, housing finance, social exclusion and the welfare state.
Baroness Greengross
Baroness Greengross (chair) Chief Executive, International Longevity Centre UK and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Corporate Social Responsibility. She was Director General of Age Concern England from 1987 until 2000 when she was awarded a life peerage; she is now their Vice President. Until 2000, she was also joint chair of the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology at Kings College London and Secretary General of Eurolink Age. At Age Concern, she established many innovative programmes including Age Resource, the Employers Forum on Age, Ageing Well, Intergenerational projects, the Exchange on Ageing, Law and Ethics (EAGLE) and the Debate of the Age. She has also built up Age Concern Enterprises into a multi-million pound business.