Author: Dr. Michael Stegmann/Location: Würzburg
The author examines phases of unemployment in the contribution records of the statutory pension scheme with respect to relevance, position, duration, and valua-tion. The analysis refers to the birth cohorts between 1938 and 1945 and distin-guishes in respect of different categories of socio-economic features. It comes to the result that unemployment cannot be regarded as a marginal phenomenon af-fecting only a few insured. It affects half of the insured, in the new Laender even two-thirds. At the same time, unemployment is an experience rather made at the end of the career. This can mainly be explained with the possibiliy to retire early af-ter a phase of unemployment. However, unemployment has consequences for the pension entitlements of long-term insured in the statutory pension scheme. As long as the phase of unemployment is episodic, as it is in the majority of cases, it does not result in precarious old age pensions. For example, men in the old Laender with at least 25 years of pension-relevant periods who are hit by unemployment, still reach 45 earing points (“Entgeltpunkte”) on average. However, these are more than four earning points less than comparable insured without phases of unemployment reach. Furthermore, the analyses reveal that phases of unemployment in early years of the career increase the likelihood of a contribution record resulting in lower pension entitlements. In other words, early phases of unemployment have a deci-sive impact on the career and, consequently, on the amount of pension.
