Magnus Brosig: Das Wissen der jungen Generation über öffentliche Alterssicherungsprogramme

Surveying the knowledge of social policy schemes has not yet become a developed field of social policy research. This contribution summarizes the results of an exploratory study aimed at gaining first insights into the knowledge that 25- to 35-year-olds have of the German public pension system, of public subsidies for private pension saving (“Riester-Rente”) and of the social assistance scheme for the elderly (“Grundsicherung im Alter”). All in all, structured interviews with twenty persons showed rather good knowledge of the basics and of pivotal concepts of these schemes, while accurate information on the specific provisions and more marginal aspects was clearly less common. Only a few interviewees showed comprehensive knowledge and clearly wrong “knowledge”, respectively, while the “unconcerned” group situated between those extremes proved to be largest in numbers: These persons considerably overestimated the benefit level and the degree of redistribution within the public pension scheme and might thus run the risk of building up insufficient pension entitlements in the long run.

Download: ZeS Working Paper 04/2015