As of: February 21, 2024, 10:43 a.m
By: Amy Walker
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Labor Minister Hubertus Heil absolutely does not want to raise the retirement age.
Leading economists consider this to be a serious mistake.
Berlin – Labor and Social Affairs Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) wants to present the new pension package in the next few weeks.
The plan is to secure the pension level to 48 percent beyond 2025 and to introduce a stock pension.
Heil and his party vehemently reject raising the retirement age: “That won’t happen with me,” the labor minister recently said.
In his view, this would be at the expense of the younger generation who are retiring after the baby boomers.
But leading economists, including economists, believe this is a fatal mistake.
The increase in the retirement age must come sooner or later.
“If you raise false expectations by saying that you never want to talk about the topic again, you will inevitably have to disappoint people at some point,” said economist Martin Werding to the newspapers of the
Funke media group
on Wednesday (February 21).
Retirement at 69 or 70 will come at some point
As a member of the Advisory Council for assessing overall economic development, Werding referred to the committee's recommendations that the standard retirement age should be raised by one year every 20 years.
“Then we will no longer be talking about retirement at 67, but at 68 and then at some point at 69. We would only reach a retirement age of 70 around 2090 if life expectancy continues to increase as previously assumed.” So that is quite a long way off Distance.
“So you should be careful how you communicate about such proposals, which are actually comparatively moderate.
Because they simply fit the demographic scenarios we are facing.”
The statutory retirement age will gradually increase to 67 by 2031.
Anyone who wants to retire without deductions in 2024 must be 66 years old.
And the economist Bernd Raffelhüschen also told
Focus
on Wednesday: “We have to prevent what Federal Labor Minister Heil wants: that young people shoulder the burden.”
He called on the younger generation to get their parents on the side of the younger generation so that something can change politically.
Because: “The SPD is only acting in the interests of the elderly here.”
The Freiburg financial scientist Bernd Raffelhüschen is one of the country's leading economists © Patrick Seeger/dpa
According to the magazine, Raffelhüschen, like his colleagues in the Advisory Council, is calling for a major pension reform with an adjustment of the retirement age to life expectancy.
In addition, early retirement should be made less attractive by increasing deductions and significantly increasing the employment rate of women, especially mothers.
These two measures would not only relieve the burden on the pension fund, but also on the labor market, where the shortage of skilled workers is becoming increasingly acute.
“We have to tackle this immediately, we really missed it,” Raffelhüschen continued.
Ifo Institute also supports higher retirement age
The Ifo Institute also supports linking the retirement age to increasing life expectancy.
“Some of our neighboring countries have already decided this – the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland,” said pension expert Joachim Ragnitz from the Ifo Dresden branch in January.
In the Netherlands, for example, the rule applies: If people live three years longer, they have to work two years longer and get a year longer pension.
The ratio of pensioners to employed people would therefore remain stable at around 40 percent even after 2040 - and not rise to almost 50 percent, as currently forecast.
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Pension increase in summer 2024: Heil gives the first forecast for pensioners
It is also worth considering no longer linking pension increases to wage increases as is currently the case.
Instead, they should be guided by the inflation rate, which is usually lower.
This would slow the increase in pension spending.
However, according to the Ifo researchers, including the self-employed and civil servants in the payment of contributions, as is often required, does not make sense.
This solution would relieve the burden on pension funds in the short term.
In the long term, however, the payouts for these groups would be significantly higher - among other things because they would have a longer life expectancy.
With material from Reuters