Die Statistik der Betriebsrente

This paper investigates the sources of information and their quality as accessible to the government of the Federal Republic of Germany when trying to assess the situation of company funded pensions between 1949 and 1985 for the Company Pension Act of 1974. By taking a closer look at multiple government surveys as well as official statistics, the paper shows that the government only had very little access to verifiable and detailed information on the matter and relied largely on estimates. There were no coherent sources of information, and none were set up after the Act came into effect. The trend of a growing distribution and extent of corporate retirement plans from the late 1940s to the 1980s as seen in the government surveys is congruent with our findings. Furthermore, the Company Pension Act strengthened this already growing trend.