...The New Study Combines Established Reporting with Methodical Innovations -
Authors: Ulrich Bieber, Wolfgang Münch, Michael Weinhardt
The study “Old-Age Security in Germany” (“Alterssicherung in Deutschland, ASID”) is the da-tabase with the most differentiated analysis option regarding the complexity of old age in-come. It was conducted in the years 1986, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2003, and, at last, in 2007 by “Infratest Sozialforschung” on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. The results of the study were quickly integrated into the latest annual report on old age provision (“Alterssicherungsbericht 2008”). The article outlines the most important results of the new study. The authors comment on the standard reporting, on the data regaring 55- to 65-years-old persons, and on the method to define rent value of owner-occupied proprietary that has been used in a study for the first time. The study shows that nearly all households of senior citizens draw old age benefits.
The pensions paid by the statutory pension scheme are the most important income source. 65 percent of the income of senior citizens arises from the statutory pension scheme; the re-tirement income of 44 percent of the senior citizens consists only of an insured´s statuory pension. It becomes apparent that the equivalenz-weighted old age income in the new Laender still features a lower distribution than the old age income in the old Laender. For the 20 percent of the households with the lowest income, the combination of low old age benefits with a minor additional income is characteristic. For this group of persons, transfer payments are unsurprisingly more significant. For households with high incomes, investment income plays a major role. The income advantage deriving from the rent value of owner-occupied proprietary is in the old Laender higher than in the new Laender and for married couples higher than for singles. As an additional component of the income, the rent value of owner-occupied proprietary does not cause a decisive increase of income disparity, because the relative significance of the rent value of owner-occupied proprietary for the income of the household is in the lower income goups of similar importance as in the higher income groups.
