A study dares to take the view of the Germany of the year 2045. The prosperity gap and in the case of pensions, the researchers see great challenges.
Since reunification, the economic gap between the old and new länder have become smaller. A new study shows that the East is threatening to fall back again soon. “By 2045, the gap is increasing, according to our forecasts again,” says a study by the Prognos AG. Reason of emigration and low birth numbers.
It is not only going to be an West-East divide, but also a South-North gradient. The economy spent per head in the East, including Berlin today, three-quarters of the Western level, declining until 2045 to less than two-thirds, and thus even below the value from the year 2000.
What the researchers expected:
Population is shrinking only slowly
Germany as a whole is growing – at least for the next few years. After that, the population decreases in number, the researchers write. By 2045, however, less than had long been assumed. “The migration movements of the last few years, is to be expected only with a decline of 2.5 percent.” This means that in 27 years, a good 80 million people will be living in Germany. Today, there are nearly 83 million.
Prosperity in cities and in the South
Countries such as Hamburg, Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg and Berlin could improve their economic performance by 2045, more than half of the gross domestic product in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-is expected to grow Vorpommern hardly, as the prognosis expected.
This is mainly due to the population development of the researchers on data from the Federal Statistical office support. “More minds usually mean more manpower and economic performance”, they write.
Saxony-loses-lasting, however, thus good one out of every five inhabitants, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the Saarland, each of the seventh. Berlin reached four million inhabitants. More and more people are being drawn in the Metropolitan area of Munich. Germany as a whole can be expected according to the study, with an annual economic growth rate of 1.3 percent.
Germany is old
This Trend is known: The baby boomers of the 1950s and 1960s retire, the life expectancy is increasing. The mean age (Median) of the German is, today, at 45.8 years, 2045 there will be a 49.5 years, scientists believe. The result is that, Except in the city States of Hamburg and Berlin, the number of people drops nationwide in the working age.
The number of Old increases, the number of people drops make
Less employed, less unemployed
Due to the demographic change, the total number of employees will decrease. In the year 2045 there will be about eight million fewer people in the working age between 20 and 64 years old, says the study.
The researchers expect that, due to the increasing life expectancy in the future more older people will work. Also expect longer working hours in the case of marginal and part-time persons employed.
In the case of unemployment, the recent lows of around five percent are not yet the end of the study. In twelve years, the unemployment rate would be nationwide, at 4.6 percent.
“Update” for the pension
If fewer and fewer people pay into a pot, but more and more people something want to get, there is one day a Problem, especially when the digitization transforms the world of work, the classic employment relationship is rare, and more people self-employed and on-call individual orders can be processed.
Currently, there are still the deductions from wage and salary of workers and employees, to fill the social security coffers. “The welfare state is in need of an Update,” Prognos.
Conceivable other financing, such as a purchase from the point of view of the institution of insurance, in the mini-jobbers, the self-employed and civil servants Deposit, or a value-added tax, capital income is stronger.
The forecast wrong?
The future is difficult to predict, this also applies to Germany-Report by Prognos. Many of the Trends to be expected, but also other institutions. The Institute of the German economy Cologne (IW), for example, is to the similar population and migration forecasts.
Prognos created the Report, all four years. Largely come to pass, among other things, forecasts for economic growth and brain drain in the East.
Previous population projections, however, waste, were, as a few years ago, hundreds of thousands of refugees to Germany. Also, the fact that the unemployment would such a fall as fast as currently, not expected by the researchers.
The research company Prognos is majority owned by the publishing group Georg von Holtzbrinck and earns his money with consulting for companies and political institutions. The entire study will be published at the turn of the year 2018/2019.
bea/hb (dpa, prognos-deutschlandreport.de)