Many women receive too little pension: “Slide into poverty in old age”

Status: 01/15/2023 11:11 am

Millions of women will receive too little pension – even though they have worked for 40 years. This emerges from a request from the left to the Federal Ministry of Labor. Many of them face poverty in old age.

Every third woman with a full-time job in Germany is heading for a net pension of less than 1000 euros even after 40 years of work. This emerges from a response from the Federal Ministry of Labor to a request from the party Die Linke, which is available to the editorial network Germany.

According to this, around 2.7 million women are affected. With a total of 7.1 million full-time employees, this corresponds to a share of around 38 percent.

A disproportionately large number of women receive a low pension

In order to get a monthly pension of 1000 euros net, employees currently have to earn 2844 euros gross per month for 40 years. To be entitled to a pension of 1,200 euros, employees would need a gross monthly wage of 3,413 euros for 40 years, the editorial network quoted from the ministry’s response.

Women also receive a disproportionately low pension. Only just under a third (32.6 percent) of all full-time employees are women. But the proportion of women among full-time employees with low pensions is significantly higher: 48.5 percent of full-time employees who are heading for a pension of less than 1,000 euros even after 45 years of work are female.

Bartsch: Millions of women face poverty in old age

In view of inflation and the already high level of poverty among women in old age, these are “catastrophic numbers,” said Dietmar Bartsch, the parliamentary group leader of the Left Party, who had made the request to the Ministry of Labor.

“More than half of all full-time workers will receive less than 1,200 euros after 40 years of drudgery,” Bartsch told the editorial network. “Millions of women are at risk of falling into poverty in old age,” he warned.

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