Jens Spahn Wants to Link Pension Amount to Length of Service Instead of Age

The deputy leader of the CDU and head of the Union faction in the Bundestag, Jens Spahn, has presented a controversial proposal to reform the German pension system. In an interview with the newspaper „Augsburger Allgemeine”, the politician argued that the current model based mainly on the retirement age is unfair to people in physically demanding jobs and those who started work early in their youth. Spahn advocates for length of service (Lebensarbeitszeit) to become the decisive factor influencing the level of benefits and the moment of ending professional activity. According to his concept, a person who became an apprentice as an eighteen-year-old should have the right to an earlier retirement without deductions compared to someone who studied until the age of 28. The proposal was met with immediate criticism from experts. Economist Joachim Ragnitz from the Ifo Institute assessed the idea as contrary to insurance logic and extremely costly. Ragnitz argues that such a system would favor low-skilled individuals at the expense of academics, which in times of labor shortages and high demographic costs is risky for the state budget. However, Spahn is not limiting himself to pensions. He also proposes that contributions to statutory health insurance be more closely linked to the actual development of incomes, which would curb the rapid increase in spending in the social sector. The German pension system is based on an intergenerational contract introduced in 1957 by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, where the working population finances the benefits of current pensioners. „Years of study cannot simply be equated with years of work in terms of calculating pension service.” — Jens Spahn Currently in Germany, there is a debate about the future of social insurance in the face of an aging society. The government pension commission is analyzing various options for stabilizing the system, but Spahn's proposal shifts the focus from the discussion about raising the retirement age to 70 years to the issue of individual career length.

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