Pension Systems in the Presence of Demographic Change

Abstract

The introduction as well as the discussion in Section 2.6 has revealed that the predicted change in the German population structure over the next fifty years entails serious consequences for the public pension system. Against this background, the question how the pension system should be adjusted to meet the demographic challenge has been the subject of numerous political debates in Germany as well as in most other industrialized countries. Although these discussions have resulted in several reforms of the German pension system, many economists and demographic experts claim that the measures enacted yet are not sufficient to meet the demographic problem, cf. [56].