Social
More and more pensioners are receiving basic security
The number of seniors with basic security in old age has increased in recent years. photo
© Felix Kästle/dpa
Hundreds of thousands of people are dependent on additional help in old age despite their pension fund benefits. The fact that their number is increasing is also due to a legal change.
More and more old-age pensioners are receiving additional benefits Basic security. Their number rose from around 414,000 at the end of 2020 to 469,000 last September, according to an evaluation by the Federal Statistical Office for the AfD in the Bundestag, which is available to the dpa in Berlin.
According to the German pension insurance, the increase is mainly due to the effects of a tax-free allowance regulation, as a spokeswoman explained. These allowance regulations were introduced with the basic pension that started at the beginning of 2021. The aim was for people with particularly low wages to receive retirement benefits above the basic security.
Since January 2021, anyone who has made contributions to employment, education or care for at least 33 years but has earned particularly little can claim an additional allowance when applying for basic security benefits in old age. In 2021, up to 223 euros of the pension remained exempt from basic security, and in 2023 up to 251 euros. “Anyone whose income was previously just above a basic security entitlement can become eligible for the new (annually increasing) allowance,” said the spokeswoman. “This explains the increase in numbers.”
More seniors with basic security in old age
In 2010, only 283,000 pensioners received basic security in old age. Five years later there were already over 414,000 and at the end of 2022 around 454,000 – of which 249,000 were women and 205,000 men. The pension insurance spokeswoman said: “With a total of around 16.3 million recipients of an old-age pension (around 16.2 million at the end of 2020/2021), this corresponds to a basic security rate of around 2.8 percent (at the end of 2020/2021 around 2.6 /2.7 percent).
Overall, the number of seniors with basic security in old age – not just those with pension benefits – has increased in recent years. At the end of 2020, more than 564,000 people in Germany were dependent on basic state security – at the time the highest figure at the end of the year since the benefit was introduced in 2003. At the end of 2022 there were even 659,000.
AfD: Politics promotes precarious employment
The AfD MP René Springer, who made the request, called the increase in pensioners who are dependent on basic security benefits “the result of a policy that promotes precarious employment and does nothing to counteract the constantly rising cost of living.” The central task of German social policy must be to effectively prevent poverty in old age at the end of a long working life.