Germany's social security system is surveyed, its benefits and contributions are discussed. The expansion of this system in the last decades is described, its impact on employment and growth is studied and proposals for the reform of the system are discussed.

In recent years, a lot of rules concerning government expenditures as well as tax revenues were changed in Germany. Government expenditures in relation to GDP were reduced, income tax rates were lowered and the budget deficit declined. The structure of government expenditures changed in favor of...

In der Finanz- und Sozialpolitik Deutschlands hat es in den vergangenen Jahren viele Änderungen gegeben. Die Expansion der Staatsausgaben wurde begrenzt, die Einkommensteuersätze wurden reduziert und das Budgetdefizit des Staates verringert. Infolge der Begrenzung der Sozialleistungen hat die...

In the process of the German unification and especially after the formal unification in October 1990, Eastern Germany was supported by West Germany by a lot of measures. The main purposes were to improve the infrastructure, to stimulate private investment and to alleviate the adjustment process...

Welfare states redistribute both between individuals reducing annual inequality and over the life-cycle insuring against income risks. But studies measuring redistribution often focus only on a one-year period. Using German SOEP data from 1984 to 2009, long-term inequality over a 20-year period...

Redistribution across individuals in a one-year-period framework is an empirically intensely studied question. However, a substantial share of annual redistribution might turn out to serve individual insurance in a longer perspective. In particular, public pensions, that smooth incomes over the...

Das Umlage- und das Kapitaldeckungsverfahren werden verglichen. Das Kapitaldeckungsverfahren hat eine größere Rendite für den einzelnen und bringt gesamtwirtschaftliche Effizienzgewinne mit sich: Es wird mehr Kapital gebildet, und Verzerrungen am Arbeitsmarkt werden beseitigt. Bei einem...

Die Rolle der deutschen Arbeitslosenversicherung wird für vier Perioden seit 1871 daraufhin analysiert, ob man bei der Suche nach einem effizienten System der Arbeitslosenversicherung aus der Geschichte lernen kann. Die vier Perioden (Periode I: 1871/1914; II: 1918/32; III: 1933/39; IV: 1949/2001) sind...

This paper examines the role of the health gradient – the positive correlation between household income and health – in individual retirement behavior, using data from the German Socio-economic Panel (GSOEP). We first estimate agegroup-specific health gradients and find their slope increases...