Inflation: Many pensioners are financially at their limit

Pensioners have lost around 1.7 percent of their purchasing power in recent years due to inflation. Other households lost slightly more purchasing power on average between 2018 and 2023, at 2.2 percent. This is the result of a study presented in Berlin on Monday by the pension insurance research network Old Age Provision. However, pensioner households only had an average monthly household income of 2,962 euros last year – other households had 4,674 euros.

Pensioner households do not have as much income and assets as other groups, said financial expert Maximilian Stockhausen from the German Economic Institute (IW). This means that restrictions are often more difficult for them. For example, many of those receiving housing benefit are pensioners – and a particularly large number of them are single people. They have particularly benefited from the improvements in housing benefit that have come into force in recent years.

Pensioners also have to spend a particularly large amount of their income on daily consumption – more than 96 percent compared to just under 85 percent for other households. Almost one in three pensioners could not cover their current expenses with their income in 2023. 5.2 percent also had no significant assets – so they are likely to be in a precarious financial situation, as the experts pointed out.

According to the study, pensioner households have an average net worth of just under EUR 170,000, which is slightly higher than that of other households, which have EUR 163,000. Pensioner households were recently in debt with an average of EUR 7,300, while other households had an average of EUR 42,000.