This article examines the relationship between disability, generation and
social policy. The moral and legislative framework for the post-war welfare
settlement was grounded in a long-standing cultural construction of
‘normal’ life course progression. Disability and age (along with gender)
were the key components in this construction, defining broad categories
of welfare dependency and labour force exemption. However, social
changes and the emergence of new policy discourses have brought into
question the way in which we think about dependency and welfare at the
end of the twentieth century. The article suggests that, as policy-makers
pursue their millennial settlement with mothers, children and older
people, they also may be forced to reconstruct the relationship between
disabled people and the welfare state
