Every tenth German pensioner faces impoverishment
In Germany with its 83 million inhabitants, there are about 20 million pensioners: thus, 3.5 percent of the elderly are forced to take on additional work. The number of elderly citizens who have fallen below the poverty line and are compelled to seek state social support has also increased in recent years: in 2009, 400 thousand residents of the country who reached the age of 65 received basic old-age security. In 2003, only 258 thousand pensioners were receiving social assistance.
“Retirement peace is a thing of the past,” says Matthias Birkwald, a Bundestag deputy from the Left Party, who requested data from the ministry on working pensioners. “Working until you drop – that is the fate of a growing number of elderly Germans.”
Impoverishment threatens every tenth German pensioner, according to the Institute for Economic Research in Halle (Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle): in 2009, the incomes of 11.5 percent of elderly residents of the FRG were below the established poverty line. The reasons why hundreds of thousands of seventy-year-olds have to earn a living in one of the most economically developed European powers lie in their small and unstable contributions to the pension fund throughout their professional careers. Some were unemployed for a long time, worked temporary or low-paid jobs, others did not succeed as private entrepreneurs, and unstable incomes did not allow them to make sufficient payments to the state for their own old age.
A bill aimed at preventing the rise in poverty among the elderly is planned to be presented by the Ministry of Employment and Social Security only in 2012. However, the decision to raise the retirement age was made quite some time ago: from that same 2012, it will gradually increase in Germany.
Residents born in 1946, as before, will retire at age 65. Those born later who want to receive their full earned pension will have to work longer – one extra month for each year. For example, those born in 1950 will work an extra four months after turning 65, those born in 1957 will work 11 extra months, and those born in 1963 will have to work until they turn 66 years and 10 months.
Finally, all those born in 1964 or later will be able to retire only at age 67. Those who are not satisfied with the extra work have no obstacle to giving up the work obligation earlier – but at the same time, they forfeit 0.3 percent of their own pension for each month not worked.
Maxim Smirnov.
