After decades of warnings about the growing pressure on the pension fund due to the increasing number of pensioners with too few contributors, positive signals are now coming from the pension insurance system.
The Deutsche Rentenversicherung (DRV) expects the pension fund to be less heavily burdened by the aging of society than previously expected.
The relationship between people of retirement age and people of working age who earn their pension will therefore probably not develop as negatively as feared in recent years. The DRV in Berlin presented corresponding figures based on the population projection of the Federal Statistical Office.
Compared to projections from 2015, the increase in the demographic burden will halve by 2060, said Reinhold Thiede, head of the research and development department at German pension insurance. He calculated this using the so-called old-age dependency ratio: This will remain below 45 percent until 2060. This means that for every 100 people of working age there are 45 of retirement age. Calculations from previous years assumed that there would be 50 to 55 people of retirement age for every 100 people of working age in 2060. The value is currently around 35.
According to the information, the new assumptions result, among other things, from less optimistic projections of human life expectancy: in 2015, the statistics were still assuming that life expectancy for men, for example, could increase from 78.5 today to 86.7 years in 2060. It is now assumed that it will only rise to about 84.5 years by then. Raising the standard retirement age to 67 will also dampen the increase in the demographic burden.
However, the new findings do not mean that there are no problems for pension insurance, Thiede said. “We have an increase in burdens ahead of us due to demographic change, especially due to the retirement of the baby boomers (…). But what lies ahead of us is no greater than what we have already achieved in the past.” There have already been similar increases in the burden without the pension insurance system being financially overburdened.
The figures presented demonstrate demographic change that has been taking place for decades: in 1960 there were still 18 people of retirement age for every 100 people of working age. In 1990, the value was already almost 24, twenty years later it was almost 34.
Source: Stern
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