In many welfare states, age-related dependence is now being recognised as an “average risk”, similar to other risks such as unemployment or illness that post-1945 social citizenship already protects against. The central proposition of this paper is the following. By creating such allowances, policy-makers are doing more than creating a programme. They are making choices about how to redesign the citizenship regime, and creating a new one. Therefore, this article examines the consequences of this issue as citizenship regimes are restructured by neo-liberalism, with particular attention to the consequences for gender relations.