‘Being Poor Also Makes You Lonely’
Old-age poverty is an increasingly worrisome problem in Germany. In a SPIEGEL interview, 74-year-old Renate Apel discusses how, even after working and paying into her pension for some 40 years, her life has become one of deprivation and want.
As Germany’s population ages, its birth rate declines and a smaller proportion of its citizens are paying into the state retirement fund, meager pensions for elderly citizens are becoming an increasingly troubling issue.
German Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Ursula von der Leyen recently published alarming figures on the future level of German pensions that have sparked widespread concern over the looming danger of old-age poverty.
Likewise, figures from the German government’s new report on provisions for old age, to be published in November, show that of the roughly 25 million employees in the country between the ages of 25 and 65 who make social security contributions, more than 4.2 million earn a gross monthly salary of less than €1,500. This only entitles these individuals to the legally guaranteed basic social security. The tax-funded payment was introduced in 2003 as a supplement to help elderly people who have low pensions and opt not to apply for welfare assistance eke out a subsistence-level existence.
German parties across the political spectrum are now scrambling to develop a new pension concept, but they have yet to make much headway. Meanwhile, pensioners like Renate Apel, 74, are struggling to make ends meet. For four years, Apel has been coming every Tuesday to a food bank run by the Hamburger Tafel (“Hamburg Table”), a charity organization that distributes surplus food and groceries from supermarkets, restaurants and other businesses to the poor.