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...

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...

We analyze a model of life-cycle savings decisions which allows for both life-time and income uncertainty. We then simulate life-cycle saving rates based on empirical income processes estimated from West German household data. Our main findings are, first, that allowing for mortality risk...

We analyze life-cycle savings decisions when households use simple heuristics, or rules of thumb, rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimization problem. The decision rules we explore are a simple Keynesian rule where consumption follows income; a simple consumption rule where only a...

This paper considers the transition from the labor market to retirement and the income position of elderly households in Germany. The empirical analysis is based on the German Socio-Economic Panel, the Income and Expenditure Survey 1993, and on social security data. The analysis reveals that...

We investigate the development of public pensions in Germany and how its significance will change when the multi-pillar systems matures due to population aging. The message of our analysis is complex. Even after the pension reforms which took place between 2001 and 2007 public pensions will...

This paper investigates the savings behaviour of German households, especially their capability and their reasons to save. We find that about one third of private households do not save at all while about 50 percent of the households save very regularly. Savings rates appear to be related to...

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...