Agenda 2030 for pension policy: Guidelines for the 21st legislative period and beyond

As a result, contribution rates must continue to rise, which will have a negative impact on the development of labour costs and dampen employment growth in Germany. If social security expenditure and contributory income continue to diverge, a downward spiral is created.

There is an urgent need to extend working life. Therefore, in the long term, there is no way around postponing retirement to a higher age by dynamizing the standard retirement age. However, this would be too late to mitigate the consequences of the retirement of the first baby boomer cohorts – both in terms of the rapidly increasing pension burden and the looming gap that the baby boomers are leaving behind on the labour market.

The upcoming federal government must use the remaining window of opportunity to eliminate disincentives in favour of early retirement for all who are still working today. This requires the abolition of early retirement without deductions and an increase in the amount of the deduction. The unlimited possibility of earning additional income when drawing an early pension should be scrutinised. Then there is no need for further incentives in favour of extended employment, as pension law systematically ‘rewards’ later retirement. Poverty prevention is achieved through a successful employment policy. The need for social policy action must be consistently addressed to the means-tested security systems - the amount of an individual's pension is not a sufficient indicator of need for help.

A sustainable reform agenda is also needed for statutory health and long-term care insurance. This is because the funding requirements are also increasing with the ageing community of insured persons. At the same time, the labour shortage has long since reached the labour-intensive healthcare sector. In medicine and nursing care, it can no longer just be a question of tapping sources of funding for desirable standards of care. In future, healthcare policy will have to be measured against what is feasible, not what is desirable.