On average it is Polish pension four percent above the cost of living for a Polish pensioner. This is the result of an evaluation of the data portal Datapulse.

This sounds tempting for German pensioners. In Germany it covers pension According to Datapulse, on average only 66 percent of the average Cost of living away. If you haven’t saved yourself here, you have to limit yourself.

The Datapulse experts emphasize: “If you look at the poverty risk of older people in relation to pension coverage, you can see that in countries where pensions exceed expenses, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, this is the case Risk of poverty usually lower.”

In addition, in Poland the retirement age is 60 for women and 65 for men. Men get their pension after 25 years, women after 20 years. In Germany, 67 will soon be the retirement age.

Poland’s pension system is hardly a role model

But anyone who is now working on the letter to the editor in order to demand the same in Germany should consider the following facts:

The average pension in Poland is only 8,400 euros. In Germany there is more than twice as much at 19,100 euros. The reason why Poles are doing so well is not more money, but rather lower spending.

“It would be unrealistic to believe that a pensioner in Bulgaria, with just under 4,600 euros, enjoys the same standard of living as a pensioner in Denmark,” write the study authors, referring to all EU countries. And what applies to Bulgaria and Denmark also applies to Poland and Germany.

In Poland, 8,100 euros a year are enough to live on. That’s less than 700 euros a month. That doesn’t get you very far in Germany. Here it has to be 28,700 euros a year, or almost 2,400 euros a month – the German pension insurance pays an average of 19,100 euros.

Why pensions last longer in Poland

The main reason for the good provision for Polish pensioners is the fixed costs in old age: “In almost all countries, around half of total retirement expenditure falls on just two areas: Reside (including additional costs such as water, gas and electricity) as well as food and beverages,” according to the Datapulse experts.

The remaining expenses are divided between health, transport, leisure, travel and moderate pleasure expenses such as tobacco or alcohol.

The Poles win over the Germans, especially when it comes to housing costs: 80 percent of pensioners live in their own homes. In Germany it is only 40 percent.

Pensioners in Poland have lower costs, but also significantly less money. This is due to a big difference to the German pension system: In Poland there is no intergenerational contract in which contributions are distributed among current pensioners, but rather an individual pay-as-you-go system.

This is how Poland’s pension system works

In Poland, every pensioner gets exactly what he paid in. At the end of a working life, the current life expectancy is used to calculate how many years the pensioner will continue to receive benefits and then what he has paid in is divided by this number. The pension contribution is 19.52 percent, also distributed between employers and employees. Those who work longer or retire later can increase their payout.

Pensions in Poland are falling quickly

Pensions fall as life expectancy increases, but old people have a certain amount of control over how much money they receive and Poland’s pension insurance is stable and largely self-financing.

In addition, only those who deposit receive money. While in Germany five years of contributions are enough to even be entitled to a pension, Poles have to prove 20 or 25 years. In addition, undeclared work is widespread in Poland and there are many old people without pension rights, for example Janina Petelczycassistant professor at the Warsaw School of Economics emphasized.

This is how pensions work in Germany

In Germany things are a little different. Here, the pension amount depends on the wages, the years worked and the general wage level in Germany. Since, according to the intergenerational contract, no money is saved, but rather the contributions that are collected are also distributed, pensions increase proportionately with wages. The state also contributes almost 128 billion euros in tax money every year, especially for mothers’ pensions.

Pensioners in Germany do not get by on their statutory pension for as long, but the payouts are significantly higher. Anyone who then has private pension provision, as has been advised for years, is generally better off than a Polish employee.