This paper discusses the consequences of population aging and a fundamental pension reform - that is, a shift towards more pre-funding – for capital markets in Germany. We use a stylized overlapping generations model to predict rates of return over a long horizon, taking demographic...

Throughout the world, population aging is a major challenge that will continue well into the 21st century. While the patterns of the demographic transition are similar in most countries, timing differs substantially, in particular between industrialized and less developed countries. To the...

This paper describes how German households save, and how their saving behavior is linked to public policy, notably pension policy. Our analysis is based on a synthetic panel of four cross sections of the German Income and Expenditure Survey ("Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichproben," EVS), 1978,...

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...

Drei Entwicklungen werden die Sozialpolitik des neuen Jahrhunderts in Deutschland prägen: die Alterung der Bevölkerung, die zunehmende Mobilität und Farbigkeit der Lebens- und Erwerbshistorien sowie der Wertewandel, der die Sozialleistungen des Staates zunehmend Dienstleistungen gleichstellt....

Internet surveys are becoming increasingly popular. Concerns about the representativeness of online samples, however, frequently cast doubts on the validity of conclusions derived from internet survey data. These doubts rest on the fact that not all persons have internet access and on the...

Throughout the world, population aging is a major challenge that will continue well into the 21 st century. While the patterns of the demographic transition are similar in most countries, timing differs substantially, in particular between industrialized and less developed countries. To the...

Hilft eine höhere Geburtenrate, die Folgen der Alterung zu dämpfen? Die Ergebnisse der Wirtschaftstheorie sind keinesfalls eindeutig, auch wenn die Idee – „Wenn wir zu viele Alte haben, brauchen wir mehr Kinder, um dies wieder auszugleichen“ – plausibel erscheint. Auch die...

This paper shows that the capital market effects of population aging and pension reform are particularly strong in continental European economies such as France, Germany, and Italy. Reasons are threefold: these countries have large and ailing pay-as-you-go public pension systems, relatively thin...