Ageing is one of the greatest social and economic challenges of the 21st century in Europe. SHARE, a EU-sponsored project that will build up a Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe, will be a fundamental resource for science and public policy to help mastering this unprecedented...

Dieser Beitrag reflektiert über die Suche nach einer „idealen Rentenanpassungsformel“ und anderen Mechanismen der Selbststabilisierung. Er versucht, dieser Suche eine gewisse Systematik zu geben. Nach etwas Theorie lassen wir die verschiedenen in Deutschland angewendeten...

Demographic change presents major financing problems for the pay-as-you-go pension system. In response to these problems, the 2001 and 2004 German pension reforms reduced the statutory level of benefits from the pay-as-you system. The resulting pension gap is supposed to be filled by funded...

This paper is motivated by the idea to create, wherever possible, rational mechanisms that adapt pension systems automatically to a changed economic and demographic environment, rather than to leave such adaptations to discretionary high-profile pension reforms, which all too often stir...

Dieser Beitrag versucht, die wichtigsten Auswirkungen der Bevölkerungsalterung auf den Arbeitsmarkt zu studieren und daraus Konsequenzen für die Finanzpolitik im weitesten Sinne zu ziehen. Der Beitrag zeigt, daß es neben dem sattsam diskutierten alterungsbedingten Anstieg der Beitrags- und...

Reforms of the public pension systems are on top of the European policy agenda. Current costs are high, and the pressures will increase due to population aging and negative incentive effects. This paper describes the causes of the current pension problems and the cures required to make the...

Einer der großen "Megatrends", der Deutschland in den nächsten Jahrzehnten entscheidend verändern wird, ist der demographische Wandel. Im Jahr 2030 werden aufgrund unserer niedrigen Geburtenrate und wegen des erfreulichen Anstiegs der Lebenserwartung etwa doppelt so viele ältere Menschen wie...

This paper analyzes effects of population aging on the labor market and determines their broad implications for public policy. It takes Germany as an example, but it equally applies to the other large economies in Continental Europe. The paper argues that, alongside the amply discussed,...

The European welfare states have fundamental problems, in particular high unemployment and a mounting pressure on public pensions. Although these problems have been prominent topics of the political debate for years and years, we have seen little fundamental reform. Why this is so? One of the...

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...