Receiving a pension even though you have never worked – you can get that

To put it bluntly: If you’ve never worked, you don’t get a pension.

There is an exception for parents who have raised more than one child. You can acquire a pension entitlement because the pension insurance also rewards parenting work. More on this below.

Nevertheless, the state takes care of citizens who cannot support themselves. You are either entitled to citizen’s benefit (formerly “Unemployment Benefit II”, “ALG II” for short or colloquially known as “Hartz IV”). Everyone who is basically able to work and has not yet reached retirement age receives citizen’s benefit. Everyone else can apply for the so-called basic security.

The basic security is, so to speak, the retirement provision for all those who have neither paid enough into the pension insurance to be able to live on it, nor have made or were able to make other provisions for their old age. The German pension insurance states as a rule of thumb: you should have your entitlement to basic security checked.

The conditions for basic security and citizen’s benefit are very similar – and both benefits must be applied for at the social welfare office at your place of residence. In exceptional cases, basic security can also be provided, but they then simply forward the application to the social welfare office. If basic security is approved, it will be paid for twelve months. The application must therefore be submitted every year.

The state makes social benefits dependent on the recipient first using up their assets. In addition, parents or children can be called upon to support the child if they earn more than 100,000 euros gross.

Your own assets do not have to be completely used up in order to receive basic security: cash up to 10,000 euros, appropriate household goods and personal heirlooms, the ideal value of which is significantly higher than the monetary value, are excluded. A house or apartment is also exempt, as long as it is appropriate in relation to the state paying for its maintenance.

Not only assets, but also possible income are counted towards basic security. Since we are assuming that someone has never worked, only this much: maintenance payments, rental income, interest, life insurance or widow’s pensions, all of this is offset against the claim.

The German Pension Insurance has published a brochure on the details of basic security. .

As described above, parents can claim a pension even if they have never worked: the so-called child-rearing periods. One of the two parents gets three years of pension credit for each child – by default the mother. If the child was born before 1992, the pension period is only two and a half years. Anyone who has five full years of pension has already acquired a pension entitlement; The German Pension Insurance (DRV) speaks somewhat cryptically of a five-year “waiting period”. Important: In order to get the pension, the pension insurance speaks of the so-called account clarification. This doesn’t happen automatically.

As I said, only one parent can apply for the three years per child. The parents can also divide the “waiting time” between themselves. It’s about who primarily raises the child. However, the pension years only exist as long as he or she does not otherwise claim child care (such as civil servants).

The child-rearing periods are assessed with a narrow salary point. This means that the mother or father has the same pension entitlement as if they had earned the average wage. Nevertheless, four periods of raising children (12 years) are not enough to achieve a pension entitlement that exceeds the basic security. For one parent who did not work, the pension insurance states that the pension for four children is a maximum of 451 euros (as of April 2024).