Better times for women: Female pensioners are catching up significantly

Thanks to increased labor force participation, women can now claim significantly longer insurance periods and higher pension entitlements when they retire than 20 years ago.

This is shown by a new evaluation by the German Pension Insurance Association for their meeting of representatives on Tuesday in Freiburg.

It is available to the FAZ in advance.

Women who reached retirement age in 2021 had an average of 36.9 insurance years.

In 2001 it was only 27.2 years.

The insurance periods of women in the west have increased particularly sharply: they have increased from 23.8 to 35.4 years.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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How this affects the individual pension in concrete terms depends not only on the duration of the contribution payment, but also on the level of wages in working life.

For example, anyone who has always worked for the average wage received a monthly pension of 34.19 euros for each year of employment in the West in 2021.

The longer insurance periods then roughly have the following effect: Those who had only worked for the once usual 23.8 years until retirement in 2021 achieved a monthly pension of 813.72 euros.

With now 35.4 years of employment at the average wage, the result was already 1210.33 euros.

And if you had 80 percent of the average wage, for example, you will also get 80 percent of these values ​​when it comes to your pension.

In contrast to the west, insurance periods in the east have risen only slightly – mainly because the number of women in the labor force is traditionally higher there.

However, in addition to the increased labor force participation, there are other factors that lead to longer insurance periods - above all the extended recognition of child-raising periods through the expansion of the so-called mother's pension in 2014 and 2019. Mothers of children born before 1992 are now 2.5 years old per child credited to the average wage in the pension.

However, this only increased the increase, emphasizes Christian Amsinck, CEO of the German Pension Insurance Association.

"The increase in insurance years is mainly due to an increased labor market participation of West German women," Amsinck told the FAZ. that regulations on early retirement have been restricted in recent years.