This Paper provides a two-part empirical analysis on how actuarial reduction rates for early retirement affect current pension payments in Germany and to what extent the existence and the magnitude of such reduction rates influence people’s retirement planning. First, when looking at...

Financing pensions in the EU is a challenge. Many EU countries introduced private pension schemes to compensate declining public pension levels due to reforms made necessary by demographic change. In 2001, Germany introduced the Riester pension. Ten years after introduction the prevalence rate...

We study how and to what extent private households are affected by the recent financial crisis and how their financial decisions are influenced by this shock. Our analysis reveals that individuals with low levels of financial literacy are less likely to have invested in the stock market and thus...

The German population has good financial knowledge measured on the basis of three financial literacy questions. Around 85 % of the individuals comprehend the functioning of interest and inflation. And 60 % of the individuals understand the relationship of risk and diversification. Overall around...

The paper examines the long-term implications of various reform options on retirement entry decisions and the actual retirement age of older workers. It focuses on the changes in pension legislation since 1992 and the reform options discussed by the German Social Security Reform Commission...

Population Aging poses an evident threat to the financial sustainability of pension systems based on a “pay-as-you-go†(PAYG) scheme. To cope with this threat, pension systems have undergone numerous reforms in many countries in order to keep people longer at work. One crucial element...

In this paper, I analyse the relation between workers’ sick leave and the composition of their work teams with respect to age, job tenure, education, and nationality. The probability of sick leave of workers in work teams is shown to be lower if their teammates are older, have shorter job...

Die Kontroverse über die „richtigen“ Zu- und Abschläge in der GRV beginnt mit mehreren Begriffsverwirrungen. Dies betrifft vor allem die Begriffe „versicherungsmathematisch fair“, „versicherungsmathematisch neutral“ und „anreizkompatibel“. Nur...

Using a sample of Europeans aged 50+ from twelve countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we analyse the role of poor material conditions as a determinant of changes in health over a four-year period. We find that poverty defined with respect to relative incomes...