As of: March 7, 2024, 2:07 p.m
By: Michael Acker
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If you deduct the rent, pensioners often don't have much left.
© DPA
When rent is deducted from their pension, most seniors don't have much left.
The district cannot shine with its place in the national ranking of pensions with the highest purchasing power - on the contrary.
Ebersberg
- A study by the Prognos research institute on behalf of the General Association of the German Insurance Industry (GDV) examined the combination of average regional pension payment amount and regional price level.
What you can afford in old age depends not only on the amount of your pension, but also on the price level where you live, explains Prognos study director Oliver Ehrentraut in the publication.
The comparisons resulted in a ranking of the pensions with the highest purchasing power in Germany.
In this ranking, the Ebersberg district is in 313th place in 2021 - out of 400.
Pension purchasing power in the district is 960 euros
According to the study, pension purchasing power is 960 euros per month.
For comparison: The region with the highest pension purchasing power is Gera (Thuringia) with 1,437 euros per month, and the district with the lowest pension purchasing power is Eifelkreis Bitburg-Prüm (Rhineland-Palatinate) with 856 euros - about another 100 euros less than the Ebersberg pensioners.
Ebersberger Thomas John is not surprised that the district is doing so badly.
The 75-year-old is the city's senior citizen representative and board spokesman for the Bavarian State Senior Citizens' Council (LSR).
In these roles he has a lot of conversations with older people, and the topic of poverty in old age comes up again and again.
It is rarely discussed openly, says John.
Those affected often do not confide in anyone; the shame threshold is too high.
Representative for senior citizens: Poverty in old age makes people sick
If you look at the average pension level and the average rents in the region, it leads to a simple calculation, the result of which is: “Because of the high rent, people don't have enough left to make ends meet,” says John.
This in turn leads to isolation because seniors can no longer take part in social life due to a lack of money.
“They often can’t even afford to go to a café,” says the senior citizen representative.
“Studies show that people who are lonely have a significantly higher risk of illness,” he adds.
A chain reaction
Is there a solution to the problem?
John doesn't see them, at least not in the short to medium term.
Of course, there was a lack of cheap apartments, says John, who, when it comes to German pension levels, points to a number of neighboring countries where pensions are “20 percent higher”.
This year there will probably be a pension increase of 3.5 percent, John believes, at a time when employees took to the streets for a pay increase of over ten percent and members of the Bundestag increased their diets by six percent.
“There’s a flaw in the system,” says John.
However, this was done 40 years ago, when there were far fewer old people in Germany.
Bavaria has the largest gap in pension purchasing power
Back to the Prognos study.
This says: Bavaria is the federal state with the largest gap in pension purchasing power.
In the Hof district - the front runner in the Free State - older people have a price-adjusted income of 1,108 euros, a third more than in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Berchtesgadener Land and the city of Regensburg, which together are at the bottom with 862 euros.
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Overall, according to the study, the combination of regional pension payment amount and price level in Bavaria is rather unfavorable: only in 13 of the 96 districts and independent cities is pension purchasing power above the national average of 1,036 euros.
In contrast, five Bavarian areas are among the ten regions in Germany where the pension value is lowest - including Munich and the Miesbach district.
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