“Link to life expectancy”
Grimm calls for an automatic increase in the retirement age
08/13/2023, 11:55 am
Should the retirement age continue to rise? In view of the shortage of skilled workers, Germany has little choice in this debate, says Veronika Grimm. She proposes a concrete formula to calculate retirement.
In the debate about the future of pensions, business wise man Veronika Grimm advocates automatically raising the retirement age as life expectancy increases. “The standard retirement age should be linked to life expectancy,” she told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “The formula for the future could be: If life expectancy increases by one year, two-thirds of the additional year would go to gainful employment and one-third to retirement.”
There should be exceptions in the case of health impairments, according to the member of the Advisory Council for the Assessment of Overall Economic Development. With a view to the shortage of skilled workers, Grimm also demanded that the “trend towards early retirement” should not continue. “We have to ensure that people want and are able to work longer, so that the actual retirement age is increasing.” There is no question that it is necessary to further raise the statutory retirement age.
According to the current legal situation, the age limit will be gradually raised from 65 to 67 years without pension deductions. For those born in 1964 or later, the standard retirement age is 67 years. The CDU recently brought up the idea of linking the retirement age to life expectancy. The party is currently working on a new basic program. The traffic light coalition has so far ruled out a further increase.
Scholz against raising the retirement age
“I am firmly convinced that we no longer need to keep raising the retirement age,” said Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz at a public dialogue in Erfurt. “Anyone who leaves school at the age of 17 has five decades of work ahead of them. I think that’s enough.” If someone wants to work longer, he should be able to do so – “but not because he has to, but because he or she can”.
Baden-Württemberg’s finance minister, Danyal Bayaz, recently warned that regular retirement at the age of 67 would not be sustainable if prosperity remained the same. In many professions, he increasingly considers working longer hours to be reasonable.