According to the social association VdK, the high employment rate of women in the former GDR today leads to a lower poverty rate in old age. This is due to the fact that in the east after reunification “all women were permanently employed and therefore received good pensions,” said VdK President Verena Bentele of the German Press Agency. In the east, the old-age poverty rate is 13.8 percent, below the western level of 16.2 percent.
This is also supported by data from the German Pension Insurance (DRV) and the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (BMAS). According to this, arithmetically, 57 percent of old-age pensions in western Germany are below the level of 1000 euros per month, in the new federal states this rate is only 33 percent. According to the Employment Agency, the employment rate for women in eastern Germany in 1993 was 48.7 percent, almost 6 percentage points higher than in the old federal states. This can still be read today, but according to the authority, the figures are not directly comparable due to methodological changes in data collection.
Bentele says: “Poverty in old age in the West is female.” Women’s pensions are said to be lower because of the upbringing of children, care and a social image that prevailed until the 2000s. Single people in particular are therefore at risk of poverty. However, there is no direct connection between old-age pensions and old-age poverty. “Especially in the west, company pensions and pensions are added,” so a pensioner with an old-age pension of 500 euros is not necessarily poor.
According to the VdK, however, the poverty-reducing effect is coming to an end in East Germany, “since the women and men in the East who were unemployed after reunification are now retiring.” In contrast to the west, according to the VdK boss, the pension is the only income for many people in the new federal states in old age. So the prognosis is bad. According to Bentele, the overall at-risk-of-poverty rate is much higher in the east than in the west, and this carries over into old age.
