1. D. Donnison, The Politics of Poverty (1982) p. 20.
2. C. Feinstein, National Income, Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom (1972), table 58.
3. Sir A. Cairncross, ‘The postwar years’, in R. Floud and D. McCloskey (eds), The Economic History of Britain since 1700 vol. 2 (1981) p. 376. The apparent incompatibility between the overall and the quinquennial rates is explained by the different base years taken.
4. Those over 75 tend to require more care since dementia becomes a more common problem and there is an increasingly disproportionate number of women, who typically have fewer resources. However, the burden of an ‘ageing’ population was not as great as had been feared before 1939, mainly because the elderly enjoyed better health and greater resources in terms of both national and family support. They even became major providers of care themselves. See P. Thane,’The debate on the declining birth-rate in Britain: the “menace” of an ageing population, 1920s-1950s’, Continuity and Change, 5 (1990) 283–305
5. P. Thane ‘The growing burden of an ageing population?’, Journal of Public Policy, 7 (1987) 373–87.