Early retirement: the incentives in current pension reform proposals

A comparison of the pension reform proposed by the Federal Minister of Labour Walter Riester in Summer 2000 with the reform that will take effect in 2002 in terms of its impact on early retirement shows that the reform will make early retirement more attractive in the long run than the proposal of 2000. The comparison especially shows that neither of the reform plans contains a major step in the direction of reducing incentives for early retirement. Such a reform would have to start with that part of the pension formula referred to as the pension access factor.