According to data released by the Federal Ministry of Labour, reported on by the “Rheinische Post” following a query from the Left party, more than one in two women who receive the long-service pension (“Rente für besonders langjährig Versicherte”) are paid less than €1,450 per month. The Ministry based its answers on statistics from the Federal Pension Insurance.
The survey showed that last year, 53.6 percent of women drawing a pension after 45 years of contribution received less than €1,450. In contrast, 21.5 percent of men across Germany earned under this threshold, which, without other income, would fall below the poverty line. The Federal Government noted in its response that the amount of the old-age pension does not necessarily translate to the overall income, as other sources of income were not taken into account.
The distribution of these earnings varies significantly by region, with lower amounts being particularly common in Eastern Germany. For instance, in Saxony-Anhalt, nearly 40 percent of men received less than €1,450, while the figure was almost 45 percent in Saxony. Conversely, 15.3 percent of male retirees with 45 contribution years in North Rhine-Westphalia received less than €1,450 monthly.
Political leaders from the Left party expressed strong concerns regarding these figures. Mandy Eißing, spokesperson for the Left party’s parliamentary group for Eastern Germany, warned that scrapping the long-service pension would hit the East particularly hard. She criticized that in Eastern regions, where many people solely rely on the statutory pension, any reductions would be keenly felt.
Sarah Vollath, the Left party’s pension policy spokesperson, echoed this sentiment, arguing that if the government were to abolish the specific long-service pension, it would condemn people to further cuts in the future. She characterized this action not as a reform, but as a pension reduction and an disallowance of the life’s work of many diligent employees in the country.
