A socio-political evaluation of the Riester subsidy is not possible on the basis of the data and measures currently available. First, there needs to be a transparent report, based on socially criteria, about the declining standard pension level of the statutory pension insurance. Second is...

The article documents the discussion of a workshop on the Riester saving which took place at DIW Berlin. Workshop participants included scientists, consumer advocates, representatives from the financial services industry, and politicians. The workshop addressed a number of controversial topics,...

The paper gives an overview of state consumer policy initiatives that the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV) is (co-)responsible for, with respect to financial services in general, and Riester-Rente products specifically. Der Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über...

Analyses based on data from the Zulagenstelle für Altersvermögen (ZfA) show a high proportion of low wage earners among Riester-Rente savers. This result cannot be generalized to the population because the data include only Riester-Rente savers. However, analyses based on the Socio-Economic...

Are social security institutions as pay-as-you-go systems permitted to accrue reserves? If so, how high might the reserves be? And how can the risk of misuse be prevented? This article attempts to answer these questions and to show options, how social security reserve funds should be dealt with....

The pension reforms of the beginning of this century left their marks. The pension level has dropped sharply. Compared with 1989 results suggest a reduction of almost 14 percent nowadays. Further reductions are announced with the consequence of threatening old age poverty particularly for low...

Within the framework of the overall evaluation of family-related benefits, the Allensbach Institute completed two acceptance analyses in 2010 and 2011 on the population’s familiarity with and assessments of 16 different state benefits intended to support families, along with benefit claiming...

Employees have a right to use occupational pension schemes through earnings conversion. This is one means to compensate the declining level of benefits of the statutory pension insurance. The article presents the regulation of these schemes, discusses problems of the interplay of public...

A new born child has on average a three months longer life expectancy than a newborn of the previous year. Consequences of these gains in life expectancy are-in the case of a constant statutory retirement age-increasing pay-out-periods in the PAYGS. The retirement age of 67 tries to cover the...

The distributional effect of the increase in the compulsory retirement age depends markedly on the individual employment history and the labor market situation. Based on model simulations and administrative data (Scientific Use Files der Rentenzugangsstatistik 2006) we analyze the income effect...