The German Riester Pension Reform And Revelation To China's Supplementary Pension Scheme

Although the main framework in multi-tier old-age security system has been set up, but there are still many problems in the process of development. First, the coverage rate of public pension insurance system is very low and the replacement rate has been declining year by year. Second, occupational pensions are developing slowly. Third, supplementary private pension scheme has been stagnation due to the absence of policy and insufficient savings incentives. However, aging of population and the weakening of the traditional family security are prompting the demand of old-age security to a sharp increase. But there are still huge resistance, such as imperfect capital market, the absence of policy and the defects of tax system in our country. In order to explore the development way of supplementary private pension scheme, this article analysis Riester pension reform in Germany since 2001 and we find that savings incentive mechanism is responsible for the success. Hence, we are trying to introduce the savings incentive mechanism into China's supplementary private pension scheme.The end of the 20th century, the problem hidden in the German public pay-as-you-go pensions had appeared. Germany's demographic structure had changed from pyramid to the pine tree structure and the contribution rate of the statutory pension insurance system continued to rise. The implicit government debt was around DM 10 to 12 billion. That was more than Germany's total fixed assets and the explicit government debt which came to DM 2.2 billion. Under the situation, Germany government introduced the Riester pensions in 2001 which were designed as a matching defined contribution scheme to fill the emerging "pension gap".The reasons for researching Riester pension reform in Germany have four points:First, German has built the most perfect social security system, which makes German pension reform become a typical case. At the same time, our country's social security system is similar to German's so that they can be compared in some specific aspects. Second, compared with other pension reform from 1972-1999, Riester reform is a special pension reform in German because of reform measures, achievement, and effect. Third, Riester pension reform since 2001, after nearly 15 years of operation, is considered to be a successful pension system reform internationally. Forth, our country's public pension system has appeared some problems today, just like German's in the end of the 20th century. So, Reister pension reform is this article's object of study.About the paper's structure, this article can be divided to five parts:The first part is the introduction. This section elaborates the purpose and significance of the topic, and combing the research status of domestic and overseas. In addition, the main research methods, the innovation and inadequacies of this article have been given here.The second part is the background analysis of Riester pension reform. This section outlines the composition and characteristics of Germany social security system firstly. Then, this article analyzes the crisis of Germany public pay-as-you-go pension system in the 20th century and the previous pension reform in German. Finally, the lessons that pension reforms in the past decades are so shallow that they can't improve sustainability in Germany social old-age insurance system are learned.The third part is the main content and characteristic analysis of Riester pension reform. The main content of Riester pension reform includes Riester product, saving incentives mechanism, operation design and so on. Each chapter is discussed in details. In the end of the part, this article summarizes six characteristics of Riester pension reform innovatively.In the fourth part, this paper analyzes the main achievements of this pension reform. Just because of this, the Riester pension reform is considered to be a successful pension system reform internationally. However, some problems also exist. For example, the amount of terminated contract and dormant contract is rising gradually and the coverage rate of Riester pension for low-income Germany families is very low. So we should treat Riester pension reform dialectically.The fifth part is the revelation to China's supplementary private pension scheme. First, the power and resistance of our country's supplementary pension insurance are analyzed in this section. Then, because the core of this article is savings incentives, next section study the application of it in our country. Eventually, we are trying to introduce the savings incentive mechanism of Riester pension reform into China's supplementary private pension scheme.Of course, the study cannot cover every aspect. Even if the research involved in this article is only on behalf of the author's opinions, which need further improvement. These deficiencies can be overcome through further research and analysis, I hope.