Rentenpaket: die Bundesregierung auf Irrwegen

In the summer of 2014 Germany will witness the most substantial expansion of pension expenditures since the 1950s. Yet, while this reform package was motivated mainly by the dismal prospect of rising old age poverty rates, it does little to alleviate this problem. On the contrary, its two central elements, an expansion of the pension claims of mothers whose children were born before 1992, and access to early retirement at age 63 for workers with a long insurance history, tend to benefit rather privileged groups of the insured. These measures endanger the sustainability of the German pension system and will necessitate future generations to work even longer than would have been the case otherwise.     

Zur Vereinheitlichung des Rentenrechts

More than 25 years after German unification, public pensions in East and West Germany are still calculated on the basis of different legally defined variables. This leads to unequal treatments, which are increasingly perceived as inappropriate. All proposals for a unified pension law have certain disadvantages, however. There is no solution which will satisfy all stakeholders. Still, the proposal of the German Council of Economic Experts, outlined and updated in this paper, has several advantages compared to others.