The SPD candidate for chancellor has made a commitment: Olaf Scholz emphasized several times during the election campaign that there would be no pension with him beyond the age of 70.
He rejects proposals from scientists to link the retirement age to increasing life expectancy.
As a former Federal Social Minister who had to manage Franz Müntefering's legacy - retirement at 67 - he knows the reservations among the workforce.
Philipp Krohn
Editor in business, responsible for “People and Business”.
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In contrast, the Deutsche Bundesbank has repeatedly presented itself as the voice of science in recent years.
Because of the increasing life expectancy, the retirement age must rise to almost 70 years so that the contribution rates and the pension level remain stable.
The calculations for this are simple calculations in which the three target variables pension level, contribution rate and entry age can be shifted.
The long-term trend is easy to see: the time it takes to draw a pension is getting longer and longer.
In the six decades since 1960, it has doubled on average from ten to 20 years.
This requires financial compensation, which is partly due to the increasing productivity of the economy.
It also has to be enough for customers aged 108 and over
The cause is the increasing life expectancy. People in industrialized countries are getting older and mostly live better. Over a few decades the increase in the global average is linear. As a rule of thumb, a younger cohort gained around two months of additional life in one year compared to an older one. In some countries, however, the trend has broken.
“In Germany, the data show stagnation since 2014 at 81 years. Perhaps the increase will start again in a few years, ”says Dmitri Jdanov, head of the department for demographic data at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock. “The waves depend on the development of new technologies.” Nobody can yet say whether the mRNA vaccines, which have been well researched since the Corona crisis, will one day bring a breakthrough in the fight against cancer. Any medical procedure can change the impact of oncological diseases on mortality. Among actuaries, that's at least one scenario to consider.
Because their companies guarantee their customers monthly pension payments for the rest of their lives. Whether they will live to be 108 years old like the actor Johannes Heesters or die on the second day of retirement, they have to have enough funds available just in case. "If everything goes as expected, there will be risk gains that are at least 90 percent back to the collective of policyholders," says Max Happacher, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of the German Association of Actuaries. “The collective is not an individual. But that is the core of the insurance concept. "