Social Security and Pensions (September / October 2025)

The study on social security and pensions was conducted by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research on behalf of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government. During the survey period from September 26, 2025, to October 10, 2025, the German population aged 16 and over was interviewed in person on the following topics: Expectations regarding necessary reforms in the social security system, particularly in the area of pension policy, challenges posed by demographic change, awareness and assessment of the German government´s current reform plans, assessment of the active pension, and expectations regarding communication of reform plans. Respondents were selected using a quota sample. Areas in which the state should make savings (construction and housing, education and research, development aid, economic promotion, family support, healthcare, health care, expansion and renovation of the rail network, internal security, police, integration of refugees, climate protection, sustainability, agriculture, nutrition, pensions, social benefits such as citizen´s income, state administration, defense, armed forces, aid for Ukraine, promotion of social initiatives e.g. for democracy education, expansion and renovation of the road network, digitization); opinion on the need to reform the social security system in Germany; important tasks of the welfare state (in order of priority): reducing social differences between rich and poor, distributing the burdens of our social system fairly between younger and older people, securing the minimum subsistence level so that everyone has enough money to live on, ensuring that social security contributions are not too high for citizens, providing greater support for families with children and single parents, ensuring a sufficiently high minimum wage, securing pensions for the future, ensuring adequate health care for all citizens, providing greater support for children from socially disadvantaged families, ensuring equal opportunities for men and women, supporting the unemployed in their search for a new job, providing care for people in need of nursing care, improving the qualifications of the unemployed so that they have better chances on the labor market, ensuring that young people without a school-leaving certificate obtain one, organizing further training for older workers, improving opportunities for foreign young people and young people from immigrant families, improving the integration of foreigners, making it easier for working people to balance family and career, combating the abuse of social benefits, putting pressure on the unemployed to find a new job as quickly as possible, providing financial support to refugees who have come to Germany); fulfilling the aforementioned important tasks of the welfare state; assessing social security in Germany (adequate, needs to be expanded or restricted); trust in various areas of social security (in case of illness, unemployment, and statutory pensions); higher taxes and more comprehensive coverage vs. lower taxes and less coverage; respondent is a retiree or pensioner; opinion on the need to reform the pension system; appropriate political measures to secure pensions (raise the retirement age, reduce pensions, provide greater financial support for private and occupational pension schemes, increase contributions to the statutory pension insurance scheme, oblige all occupational groups to pay into the pension insurance scheme, including civil servants, self-employed persons, politicians, creating incentives to work longer beyond the retirement age, increasing taxes to finance the statutory pension, obliging citizens to make private provisions in addition to the statutory pension insurance, the state building up capital whose returns stabilize pension contributions, fewer people becoming civil servants so that more people pay into the pension fund, expanding daycare places so that more women can go to work, making it easier for refugees to find work so that more refugees can go to work); the respondent mentioned at least one of the twelve measures; opinion on the intergenerational fairness of the pension system; disadvantaged generation; employed; Willingness to retire later than currently required by law; assessment of the proposal to link the retirement age to life expectancy; assessment of the proposal to introduce a so-called “boomer solidarity surcharge” to relieve the burden on the younger generation; expected personal financial situation in old age; Split A: Knowledge of various planned or decided reforms of the welfare state (increase in mothers´ pensions, greater crediting of child-rearing periods for pensions, introduction of an “early retirement pension,” introduction of an “active pension,” fixing the current pension level until at least 2031, stronger sanctions for citizen´s income, refugees from Ukraine no longer receiving citizen´s income but lower benefits like other asylum seekers, increase in pension contributions, tax exemption on overtime pay); at least one of the eight points mentioned; assessment of the planned reforms; personal advantages or disadvantages of the planned reforms; the coalition´s pension plans will stabilize the pension system in the long term vs. rather burden it; the federal government will consistently tackle reforms to stabilize the pension system / reforms to citizen´s income (end of split A); Split B: The coalition´s pension plans will stabilize the pension system in the long term vs. rather burden it; the federal government will consistently pursue reforms to stabilize the pension system / reforms to citizen´s income; knowledge of various planned or decided reforms of the welfare state (as above); assessment of the planned reforms; personal advantages or disadvantages of the planned reforms (end of split B); gap between citizen´s income and low wages appropriate, too large or too small; preferred measures to increase the gap between citizen´s income and low wages again (reduce citizen´s income, increase minimum wage, reduce income tax, other); at least one of the four points mentioned; sufficient information from the state about planned reforms to the social system; only personal impact of welfare state reforms of interest; sources of information about the development of the welfare state and social security (articles on news websites, public television or radio, private television or radio, articles in newspapers/magazines, posts on social media, websites or newsletters of the federal government or federal ministries, consumer protection organizations, health insurance companies, pension insurance companies); at least one of the 10 sources of information mentioned. Demography: Sex; age; age categories; school-leaving qualifications; employment; occupational status; monthly net income of the main breadwinner (grouped); main breadwinner (respondent, other person in the household); children; number of children; age of children; number of children in the household; multi-person household or single-person household; number of persons in the household with their own income; monthly net household income (grouped); marital status; living with a partner; federal state; population of place of residence (size of town); character of place of residence; party affiliation; socio-economic status. The following were also coded: external questionnaire number; West-East questionnaire identifier; sub-group identifier; weighting.