Nachhaltige Finanzierung der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung durch inter- und intragenerative Umverteilung – ein Reformvorschlag als Generationenkompromiss

Demographic change is causing a generational conflict in the statutory pension insurance system between an adequate level of benefits and sustainable contribution rates. Current pension policy in Germany focuses mainly on benefits and results in an exclusively intergenerational distribution of the demographic burden, which is increasingly to the disadvantage of young and future generations. Stefan Seuffert and Philipp Toussaint examine reform options for burden-sharing at inter- and intragenerational levels and present a reform proposal permitting compromise solutions among the conflicting goals of contribution and benefit stability as well as between benefit principle and basic security effect. Sustainability-neutral base protection (“Sockelschutz”) results in an intragenerational redistribution for effective protection against poverty in old age without changing the intergenerational burden sharing. The intragenerational redistribution of such a base protection of 28 earnings points is more than five times as effective in supporting the basic pension protection rate as the intergenerational redistribution of 432 billion euros through a pension level bracket of 48 percent.