Drohende Altersarmut – neue Aufgaben für die Rentenversicherung?

Abstract

Oliver Arentz and Steffen Roth state that poverty among the elderly is currently an exception in Germany. Nevertheless, it is foreseeable that future pensioners will have less income and assets at their disposal. Reasons are the effects of the demographic change to the pay-as-you-go pension scheme, gaps in employment biographies and low pay employment. With that in mind, they discuss the reform package advocated by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Furthermore they derive guidelines for a sustainable reform of the pension schemes.

Bert Rürup also argues that poverty in old age is up to now not a relevant social problem in Germany. Nevertheless, there are clear indications that poverty among the elderly will increase in the future due to a bundle of reasons. Because of this there is no silver bullet to solve this problem. In the conception of an adequate strategy to reduce and to prevent a rise of poverty in old age, however, the equivalence principle as the basic principal the German statutory pension scheme has to be questioned critically.

Jan Goebel gives an overview of the current development of old-age poverty in Germany and classifies widely discussed concepts for the reform of statutory pension insurance. Although current indicators generally point to an increase in old-age poverty, the empirical data show no growth at present in poverty risk for persons aged 65 and older. However, it is expected that the income position of older people will be worsen due to the declining pension payments of new retirees and the increase in discontinuous employment trajectories as well as the insufficient spread in private old age provision. One of the reforms discussed for preventing rising poverty risks in old age is to consider life expectancy in the pension formula. This appears to be a promising means of reducing inequality within the group of pensioners, he states. The implicit redistribution within the statutory pension system due to the empirically well-known correlation between living standards and life expectancy will decrease, and the equivalence principle can be strengthened.