This paper describes the German pension reform process 1992-2007 with a stress on a remark-able development: the public pay-as-you-go-financed pension system has almost silently moved from a traditional defined benefit system to a system which works in many respects like a defined contribution...

Pay-as-you go pension systems are an insurance against the risks of longevity-related old-age poverty and related risks. In addition, they are commonly also used as an instrument of redistribution. This paper provides alternative estimates of the transfer share in the German PAYG public pension...

Demographic change confronts the German Pay-As-You-Go pension system with serious problems. For this reason, reductions in the level of public pensions were adopted under the pension reform in 2001, which also strengthened significantly the funded second and third pillars of old-age provision....

Summary This paper looks at the sources or retirement income and how these might change in the course of population aging. It stresses four points: Retirement income exhibits a large degree of heterogeneity. While some households are overannuitized, there are still pockets of poverty in old age....

Germany has one of the most generous public pension and health insurance systems of the world, yet private savings are high until old age. Savings remain positive in old age, even for most low income households. How can we explain what we might want to term the 'German savings puzzle?' We...

Public pensions - the primary pillar of old-age income provision - will, in the future, be less generous than they have been in the past, in particular owing to the impact of demographic change. The pension gap is supposed to be plugged by the second and third pillars of pension provision....

Intergenerational support regains attention in course of population aging. This paper focuses on the relationship between private and public financial transfers to and from the elderly. Based on German data we find that the giving of private transfers is influenced by public transfers. The close...

Aim of this paper is to study the provision of income to the elderly in Germany and to assess whether the German social security system provides an adequate retirement income in a sustainable way. Accordingly, the paper has two parts. The first part describes the German public old age social...

Um eine Gewichtsverschiebung zwischen den einzelnen Säulen der Alterssicherung zu erreichen, wurden in den vergangenen Jahren auch die Rahmenbedingungen für die betriebliche Altersvorsorge verbessert. So wurde für Arbeitnehmer der Anspruch auf Entgeltumwandlung eingeführt, was erlaubt, Teile...