April 2024
05Apr

Wealth Creators or Inheritors? Unpacking the Gender Wealth Gap from Bottom to Top and Young to Old

By Eva Sierminska, Charlotte Bartels & Carsten Schroeder There is growing interest in understanding how gender influences the accumulation of wealth. While prior studies have focused on labor-related determinants, our research focuses on inheritances and gifts. Using unique data that over samples the top 1% of wealth holders in Germany, we show that the gender wealth gap is small for individuals up to age 40, then widens, and declines for those past retirement age. Transfer amounts and their timing are...

April 5, 2024
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February 2024
19Feb

Fewer Germans opting for early retirement, figures show

More and more people in Germany are working between the ages of 63 and 67, government figures show, reported dpa news. The standard pensionable age for those born after 1964 is 67. Early retirement is possible starting at 63, with a reduction in benefits. The data show the number of people in the 63 to 67 age group who are still subject to social security contributions and at least marginally employed rose steadily from 1.31 million in 2020 to 1.67 million...

February 19, 2024
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16Feb

Gender Inequality Over the Life Cycle, Information Provision and Policy Preferences

By Alessandra Casarico, Jana Schuetz & Silke Uebelmesser We conduct a survey experiment with four thousand German respondents and provide information on two measures of gender inequality, separately or jointly: the gender gap in earnings and the gender gap in pensions. We analyze the effect of information provision on respondents’ views on the importance of reducing gender inequality and on their agreement with the adoption of policies targeted at different stages of the life cycle and aimed at reducing the...

February 16, 2024
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November 2023
21Nov

German government to make pension funds join dashboard

The German government is preparing an ordinance to make pension funds exchange data with the pension dashboard – Digitale Rentenübersicht – by the end of next year, said Imke Petersen, head of the Zentralen Stelle für die Digitale Rentenübersicht (ZfDR), the unit within the first pillar manager Deutsche Rentenversicherung responsible for designing the platform. “On 31 December 2024 all pension funds will have not only to be registered with us, but also will be able to deliver [data],” Petersen said,...

November 21, 2023
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16Nov

German government drafts law to reform second pillar pension system

The German government has drafted the law to reform the second pillar occupational pension system, Rolf Schmachtenberg, state secretary for the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry, announced during the Handelsblatt conference on occupational pensions yesterday. The 24-point draft law – called Betriebsrentenstärkungsgesetz 2024 – deals with the difficult topic of opening up the social partner model to third parties not bound by collective bargaining agreements, the state secretary said, adding that the ministry is examining the legal aspects of such change...

November 16, 2023
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October 2023
26Oct

Inflation hits occupational pensions in Germany, says Deloitte

Inflation is having a negative impact on occupational pensions in Germany, with both the number of employers interested in, or contributing to company pension schemes declining this year compared with 2022, according to an occupational pensions study conducted by Deloitte. According to the research, 38% of the employers surveyed is “clearly” worried about losses in terms of retirement provision because of the current level of inflation, 14% consider the impact of increasing consumer prices on pensions dramatic, whereas only 14% is...

October 26, 2023
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18Oct

More German pensioners are slipping into poverty each year

For an increasing number of retirees, Germany’s state pension payments are not sufficient to keep up with the rising cost of living. While the Left Party are calling for a 1.200-euro per month pension, the VdK argue that insecure working conditions lie at the heart of the problem. 10 percent more retired people are claiming benefits in Germany A request submitted to the Federal Office of Statistics (Destatis) by the German Left Party has revealed that between June 2022 and June 2023, the number...

October 18, 2023
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August 2023
24Aug

Retirement age in Germany continues to rise, new figures show

Last year the average age for men to access old-age pensions increased to 64.4. This is up from 64.1 the previous year and 62.4 years in 2001. For women, the retirement age also rose, from 62.5 in 2001 to 64.2 in 2021 and 64.4 last year. In a parallel development, retirees in recent years have been receiving their benefits for longer. Among men, the duration of pension benefits has increased from 16.7 to 18.8 over the past decade. Women received...

August 24, 2023
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16Aug

German economist proposes formula to increase retirement age according to life expectancy

A member of the German Council of Economic Experts has proposed a formula to split additional years that a person can expect to live between working life and retirement, triggering opposing political reactions. The mechanism, devised by Veronika Grimm, automatically links a person’s retirement age to their life expectancy, meaning that people would work longer. “The formula [to link the retirement age to life expectancy] in the future could be: ’if life expectancy increases by one year, two-thirds of the year would be...

August 16, 2023
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10Aug

German government moves to boost first pillar equity pension fund to €200bn

The German government is planning to beef up funds for equity investments in the first pillar to €200bn until 2025, according to a report published by Handelsblatt newspaper. The government will contribute to the first pillar equity fund, dubbed Generationenkapital or generational capital, which will turn the purely pay-as-you system into a partially capital-funded system, with €12bn instead of €10bn from 2024. The sum will increase by 3% in each of the following years, to reach a total amount of €200bn by...

August 10, 2023
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