Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy

Researchers analyzed the willingness of elder people in Europe and Israel to get vaccinated against Covid-19

Professor Axel Börsch-Supan, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich, is calling for a rethink of current public pension arrangements. He suggests linking the retirement age to life expectancy to keep the financial burden on the younger generation manageable.

Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy publishes first wave of Pension Maps

Research project presents ways of overcoming future immigration challenges

Miriam Schader and Constantin Hruschka on the Science Initiative Migration

Admission criteria, distribution plans, or asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders: the adopted EU asylum reform aims to clarify many aspects. Ulrich Becker and Constantin Hruschka call for effective and legally secure border procedures.

Which country has the best pension system? The researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy are often confronted with this question. However, there’s no simple answer: each country has its own structures that have been developed to ensure its citizens are provided for financially in retirement, and each have their advantages and disadvantages. Ulrich Becker and Simone M. Schneider have developed a visualization of the institutional structures of old age pension systems that provides an overview of these systems and enables comparisons between them.

For decades now, migration has been massively changing the structure of society in Europe. But how does it actually feel to grow older in a new country? And does the risk that comes with migration ultimately pay off for those who take it? Stefan Gruber and Gregor Sand at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy set out to find answers to these questions.

The fight against COVID-19 appears to be taking place mainly at a national level, while the World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly been the subject of criticism. However, according to Lauren Tonti and Pedro Villarreal, the role of the WHO is often underestimated. They explain from a legal point of view what action the organization is taking during the pandemic, and where there is a need for reform.

Compulsory retirement for mayors at 65? Too old to embark on a career as a firefighter at 30? Age limits seem out of tune with the times – even virtually discriminatory. Yet there is one age limit that most people are happy to hold onto: retirement age. Ulrich Becker, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in Munich, studies the characteristics of age-specific regulations and their legal intricacies.

Introducing ethically controversial technologies into the public health system inevitably provokes societal and legal conflict. The consideration of ethical and religious concerns in state decisions raises a problem of legitimacy. By adopting the position that the state must act in an ethically neutral manner, the project analyses the relationship between ethics and law and its implications for the public health system. The examination adopts a comparative, legal-constitutional perspective and investigates two case studies: preimplantation genetic diagnosis and non-invasive prenatal testing. 

The „Pension Maps“, a collaborative project of researchers from all over the world, aims to make pension systems visible and comparable at a glance. The Pension Maps, consisting of a clearly arranged graphic for each of the 29 countries studied, entails all relevant information on how old age security is organized in a country, to whom access is granted, how fragmented or universal a system is, and how high the average pension level is compared to the average in the EU and the OECD. In this way, the project contributes to a better understanding of the differences in old-age security systems. 

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) is a representative survey on the life circumstances of the population aged 50+ in 27 European countries and Israel. Its multidisciplinary and international approach make SHARE the ideal setting for analysing the consequences of the pandemic. This contribution outlines the central results of the SHARE Corona Survey regarding health, economic and social consequences of the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic and of the political containment measures for the life circumstances of the older part of the European population. 

The measures adopted to contain the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a rapid economic downturn across the globe. To forestall the most dramatic economic and social consequences, European governments and parliaments introduced extensive aid packages aimed at stabilising the employment sector, preventing redundancies, and supporting those whose livelihoods the crisis threatened. This research project analyses and compares the labour market and social policy measures introduced in light of the Corona crisis in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Since the late 1990s, the formerly dramatic decline in older men’s labor force participation has been replaced by sharply rising participation rates. Older women’s participation has increased dramatically as well. As our research at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy unveils, pension reforms and the increase in the financial incentives to work at older ages can explain this historic reversal.