(de-news.net) – Germany’s pension system is poised to encounter substantial pressures as demographic ageing accelerates. In its newly released report, Pensions at a Glance 2025, the OECD projects that the German working-age population will contract by roughly 23 percent over the next four decades, a decline markedly steeper than the organization’s average estimate of 13 percent across member countries. This prospective shrinkage in the contributor base raises significant concerns about the long‑term financing and adequacy of retirement benefits.

The analysis emphasizes the centrality of longer working lives to safeguarding pension sustainability. It criticizes existing legal provisions that allow employment contracts to stipulate automatic termination upon reaching the statutory retirement age, arguing that such arrangements constrain the choices of older workers and impede their continued participation in the labor market. In the absence of reforms that support later retirement and flexible transitions, the system’s capacity to balance contributions and entitlements will be increasingly strained.

The report further highlights entrenched gender disparities in pension outcomes driven by cumulative differences in lifetime earnings. Variations in employment participation, hours worked, and hourly wages produce an average gender earnings gap of around 35 percent across OECD countries, with unequal burdens of unpaid care and household labor compounding these effects. Addressing these inequities will require coherent strategies that align labor market, family, and pension policies, including measures that expand affordable childcare, reduce work disincentives embedded in tax and benefit systems, foster women’s entry into technical and high‑demand fields, and ensure equal access to leadership opportunities. Where rules permit earlier pension access for women, removing such provisions would also narrow the gender gap in retirement income.