Mothers in particular often receive a lower pension in old age because they have earned less money to look after their children.
New figures show that this is now changing.
Munich – Women receive a lower statutory pension in old age and are more often at risk of poverty in old age.
One reason for this is, among other things, that many women have cut back on their gainful employment over the years or have even given up completely to look after their children.
It is now becoming apparent that the mother's pension will at least mitigate the financial losses.
Mothers' pension: Mothers with one child overtake childless women when it comes to pension payments
Mothers were able to catch up financially, especially compared to childless women, as reported by
Bild
: In 2012, a childless woman received 22.38 percent more pension than a woman with two children.
In 2014, the mother's pension was introduced - and the pension gap melted away: in 2021 the difference in pension between childless women and mothers with two children was only 2.5 percent.
What is the mother's pension?
The mother's pension refers to an improvement in performance in the statutory pension insurance for parents whose children were born before 1992.
It was introduced on July 1, 2014, when the child-rearing period was extended from 12 to 24 calendar months.
Since January 1, 2019, all parents with children born before 1992 have 30 months per child.
(For comparison: for children born later it is 36 months)
The child-rearing period can be credited to the German pension insurance.
The child-rearing period increases the pension roughly as if the mother or father had continued to earn the same average income and paid contributions after the birth as before.
Women with one child have now overtaken even childless women when it comes to pension payments, the newspaper reports: According to German pension insurance, a woman with a child who retired in 2021 received an average of EUR 921, while childless women received EUR 897.
After all, women with two children still received an average of 875 euros.
Because: While the pensions of childless women increased by only 37.7 percent from 2012 to 2021, the pensions of women with one child increased by 50 percent and women with two children by 63.7 percent - thanks to the mother's pension, so the
picture
.
Average pensions of men and women
But childless or not: women are still far away from the average pensions of men.
While women in the old federal states received an average pension of 809 euros in 2021, men received 1218 euros – more than 400 euros more.
In the new federal states, the difference is smaller because of the higher level of employment among women – but so is the pension level: there, women received a pension of EUR 1070 and men EUR 1141.
After all, in 2022 pensions have increased again and the gap has narrowed somewhat: last year, men received an average of 1,276 euros a month, and women received 1,060 euros.
