News about social security and income maintenance opened with a special insertion on pensions in The Times of 11 May. This consisted of articles on various aspects of the new earnings-related pension scheme which came into force on 6 April. The accounts included funded schemes; private pension schemes; employers' and employees' participation; age flexibility in retirement; insurance funds; the property market and investment; the problem of size; the position of widows; trade unions and pensions; the exclusion of the self-employed and the position after the 1980s. The opening article said that the important achievement of getting the scheme into operation was diminished by the sheer weight of ignorance about it – ‘All the evidence to date indicates that the vast majority of people cannot or will not understand the new State pension scheme.’ This may be regrettable but it is not surprising in view of the scheme's complexity. How far the govermnent's efforts to overcome widespread ignorance will be successful remains to be seen (28 – 7/4 – 1.7). women was raised once again in a discussion document on the role of the elderly in society published on 27 June, A Happier Old Age. The numbers and circumstances of elderly people and public expenditure on services to help them were presented in the document which was concerned not only with pensions but with family life, recreation, mobility and other aspects of later life. Comments were invited by the Secretary of State for the Social Services by the end of October. The publication of a White Paper on the elderly in 1979 was foreshadowed. The problems of retirement age and the difference between men and women were presented and discussed in August 1976 (22 – 6/z – 1.8) and in February 1977 (24 – 6/4 – 1.10).