YouGov test of German think tank proposals finds the public are divided on whether young workers or richer pensioners have greater responsibility for helping poorer pensioners
Controversial new policy proposals from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) have caused a stir in that country. The DIW’s Director Marcel Fratzscher has highlighted the burden placed on younger generations in German society, and called for older generations to be required to do more to tackle poverty and worker shortages, telling Der Spiegel magazine “why should only young people be held accountable for these life decisions of the Baby Boomers?”
One of the proposals that Fratzscher has made is for a year of “mandatory social service” for new retirees. The recent UK general election campaign famously saw the Conservatives fight on a platform that included reintroducing a form of national service for the young – so how would Britons feel about conscripting the old?
While Britons tend to support the creation of a voluntary scheme for new retirees to do a year of social work (47% say so, compared to 26% opposed), making such a scheme mandatory as Fratzscher proposes garners the backing of a mere 14%.
Fully 73% of Britons would oppose making newly retired Britons perform social work for a year. Perhaps unsurprisingly it is those on the cusp of retirement – our 50-64 age group – who are the most opposed, at 80%.
Notably, young people are also firmly against the idea, with just 16% in favour. By happenstance, this proves to be the exact same level of support among 18-24 year olds that our 2023 national service poll found for requiring young people to do a mandatory year of community work.
Older Britons in that poll did not return the sentiment, however, instead being much more willing to require the youth to do mandatory social service (50% of over-65s backed the idea) than they are for new retirees (19%).
Should richer pensioners have to be the ones to help poorer pensioners?
Another proposal made by the DIW was to move more of the burden for alleviating pensioner poverty from younger people in working generations to wealthier pensioners. Dubbed the ‘Boomer solidary surcharge’, the suggestion is for a tax on retirement income to be levied on a sliding scale above a certain threshold, with the money raised spent on social security for the poorest pensioners.
The British public also tend to oppose our Anglicised version of this proposal, with 47% rejecting “increasing tax on pension income for those with above-average pension incomes, in order to fund more generous state pension payments for the lowest income pensioners”, compared to 36% who are in favour.
While the level of support is largely consistent across age groups (34-39%), there were significant differences in outright opposition. This ranges from only 27% of 18-24 year olds (meaning that this age group are more likely than not to support the plan), to 41% among 25-49 year olds (making them divided overall), to outright majority opposition among the over 65s, at 59%.
More broadly, we also wanted to test how the public felt about the sentiment behind the DIW proposal; whether they agreed that more responsibility for helping the lowest income pensioners should rest with richer people the same age, rather than working people from younger generations.
This answer divides the public, with 34% agreeing with the DIW that more affluent pensioners should be shouldering the greater portion of the burden, while 29% see it as the responsibility of the working young to do so.
Unsurprisingly sentiment differs by age. A majority of 18-24 year olds (54%) believe richer pensioners should be picking up more of the slack, as do a plurality of 25-49 year olds (38%). Among the over-50s, the tendency is to say that working people in younger generations should be the ones to improve the lot of poorer pensioners.
See the results on national service here
What do you think about new retirees having to do community service, whether older generations should do more to help the young, and everything else? Have your say, join the YouGov panel, and get paid to share your thoughts. Sign up here.
Photo: Getty
