We investigate the trend and the regional variation in height among German military recruits born during the first half of the nineteenth century. The results show a downturn in height, as in many other parts of Europe and America, particularly substantial for those born at the end of the 1830s....

Die Rentenreform 2001 hat mit der Riester-Rente ein staatlich gefördertes, reguliertes Altersvorsorgeprodukt eingeführt. Über diese zusätzliche Altersvorsorge sollen die künftigen Rentnergenerationen das langfristige Absinken des gesetzlichen Rentenniveaus kompensieren. Dieser Beitrag geht...

This paper contributes to the debate on the adequate elicitation of individual risk attitudes in general socio-economic surveys. A multi-item question on the willingness to take risk, a very short form of the DOSPERT scale (Weber et al., 2002) and a series of lottery tasks are compared with...

Die geplante „Mütterrente“ wird bis 2018 den Rentenbeitragssatz um durchschnittlich 0,3 Prozentpunkte erhöhen und das Bruttorentenniveau um durchschnittlich 0,4 Prozentpunkte reduzieren. Da ab 2019 der Bundeszuschuss schrittweise erhöht werden soll, werden die längerfristigen Wirkungen...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of what determines access to occupational pensions as perceived by workers. We investigate this issue in Germany, where workers have the legal right to an occupational pension since 2001, but many might lack the incentive or the ability to gather and...

Die Verbreitung der staatlich geförderten privaten Altersvorsorge (Riester-Rente) verläuft insgesamt nach wie vor sehr dynamisch. Zehn Jahre nach Einführung der Riester-Rente ist ihre Verbreitung jedoch in bestimmten Bevölkerungsgruppen noch relativ gering. Ein Grund dafür scheint zu sein,...

Population Aging poses an evident threat to the financial sustainability of pension systems based on a “pay-as-you-go†(PAYG) scheme. To cope with this threat, pension systems have undergone numerous reforms in many countries in order to keep people longer at work. One crucial element...

Over the past years, the financial situation and the retirement prospects of the so-called babyboomers (people born during the demographic Post-World War II baby-boom) have become source of public concern and has attracted a great deal of attention in the US. In Germany, on the contrary, the...