Blog post

Der Rentengewinn der Generation enkellos

Publishing date: 18 April 2006
Authors: Jakob von Weizsäcker

It is well known that low fertility rates today will lead to lower pay-as-you-go pensions in the future. What is less well known is that lower fertility today increases today‘s pensions since people without children work more and therefore pay higher pension contributions. Jakob von Weizsäcker and Robert Fenge (ifo Institut) estimate that this effect boosts German public pensions by 6 percent. Since this windfall was unexpected and unintended, they propose to eliminate it and transfer the funds to young families with children instead. This article is based on an original paper "Generation Enkellos und Rentenbeitragsrabatt für Eltern".

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About the authors

Jakob von Weizsäcker

Jakob von Weizsäcker heads the department for economic policy and tourism at the Thuringian Economics Ministry in Erfurt and is a non-resident fellow at Bruegel where he was resident fellow form 2005 to 2010.

He previously worked at the World Bank in Washington (2002-2005) where he was country economist for Tajikistan and the Federal Economics Ministry in Berlin (2001-2002) where he headed the office of a junior minister. Before that, he worked for Vesta, a venture capital firm, and held research positions at the Center for Economic Studies in Munich and CIRED in Paris.