Is Germany being unreasonable? Childfree adults paying more for elder care

[Fauxlein]

"Childfree adults to pay more in elder care contributions — report
According to a report from German media group RND, federal Health Minister Nina Warken has prepared a draft bill that would have adults without children pay a higher percentage of taxes towards publicly-funded elder care.
The bill would have contributions from childfree adults increase by 0.7% over a period of years, meaning they would pay 2.5% of their income each month. Their employer will be expected to pay 1.8%. For adults with children the rates will remain the same: 1.8% for people with one child, 1.55% for people with two children, and 1.3% for people with three or more children.
Under the proposal, all adults over the age of 23 who are working full-time would be affected.
It is unclear when Warken, a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), will submit the draft to the cabinet. Her ministry had originally said it would present a proposal for elder care reform in mid-May. With a long-stagnating birthrate mildly buoyed by immigration, Germany needs to act fast to make sure older generations can be taken care of without placing an undue burden on young people."

YABU - German Health Minister is being unreasonable, it's not kids responsibility to look after elderly parents and is unfair to penalise child free people
YANBU - this seems like a fair counterbalance to increasing costs to the state of elder care

Taking this to an extreme perhaps we should all be given a ranking for our life choices. So I have three children all of whom pay tax and entered work at 18. Minus points for having a chronic health issue therefore using NHS. Plus points for never smoking using drugs or being obese. Plus points for having worked myself until retirement?

I need to check the proposal but part of our deductions are specially for "care" iirc.

But in general? Yeah why not.

I don't think it is as straightforward as this. It is more like a tax break for those with children, as part of a push to raise the birth rate.

This - plus cost of healthcare provided to children. Those of us who are childless not by choice have a rough ride anyway - the emotional strain, loss, grief, it’s much harder to make friends as no school parents to socialise with.

But the logical interpretation might be: those scoring all those plus points are trying hard to be model citizens, so they'll be happy to see it as their duty to pay more tax than those scoring lower points.

No, you have to pay if you don't have children. It's been the same since 2005. Doesn't matter why you don't have children.

Honestly? I think this is a ploy to encourage Germans to have children! It’s a not so subtle way of growing the population. It might make a some people who haven’t decided either way if they’ll have children, actually decide in favour of having children!

No it's not. People with children get other tax cuts plus 250€ per child per month in child benefit already.

People are getting awfully worked up about something that has very, very little impact in practice.
Firstly, everybody who earns above a low income (I think around 6,000 euros annually) already pays this ‘care insurance’ alongside their health insurance and pension. It’s quite a low amount (I seem to pay around 35 euros monthly), but it makes a dent in what the state pays for elderly care.

Parents of kids or young adults under 25 pay marginally less than this already low amount, and the number of offspring is relevant too. It makes a tiny, tiny difference to the total amount paid. Nobody is being ‘punished’.

My insurance agency, which collects the payments, apparently ballsed up some calculations from 2023 to 2025 and had to redo them all, which involved me sending birth certs to prove when each DC was under 25. The refund I was due after all that was <drum roll> just under 10 euros over 3 years. Tiny amounts.

So this is a highly symbolic act more than a realistic motivation for people to have kids or not. I don’t have a problem with it one way or the other. The German birth rate has long been too low, and people are very aware that the Labour market won’t be big enough to fund future pensions. That’s not controversial.

What’s way more unpleasant is the sentiment bubbling under the surface that the ‘wrong people’ are having kids (or not), ie too many uneducated forriners procreating and not enough highly educated ‘real Germans’. That’s the real ethical issue here.

It’s just been announced that child benefit (which is about 250 euros monthly) will be paid automatically in future without having to apply - now THAT might make a real financial difference for some people because the application form was a bugger.

Well maybe they looked at the real costs of what children do for their parents?
Me and my siblings took care of my mum for the last 7 years of her life.
We didn't even seek government support.
She preferred it that way.
She need 24 hour care the last year of her life so I imagine we saved the council something.

But what about people who want children who can't have them for whatever reason? It seems very unfair.

There are tax breaks/surcharges across many areas.

The wording is horrible, particularly when translated:

https://www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de/DRV/DE/Experten/Arbeitgeber-und-Steuerberater/summa-summarum/Lexikon/B/beitragszuschlag_fuer_kinderlose?nn=6a097da6ca84ce5471c1751a

Beitragszuschlag für Kinderlose/Contribution surcharge for childless

Here it tends to be looked at as tax breaks by those benefiting and as a penalisation/a surcharge by those who have to pay more.

Personally I think it borders on cruelty/shaming, particularly for those who are involuntarily childless. It would be much better if it was uniform (with the usual basis on salary), with benefits given back in other ways to support children.

Unfortunately 100 per cent agree on this.

“What’s way more unpleasant is the sentiment bubbling under the surface that the ‘wrong people’ are having kids (or not), ie too many uneducated forriners procreating and not enough highly educated ‘real Germans’. That’s the real ethical issue here.“

There have been massive changes in levels of racism in the past decade. Not just those who respond to AFD dog whistles. First it was snide comments and hidden messages about ‘problems with our friends from x, y and z countries’. Now it has escalated to people who will openly make statements about German behavior being superior, compared to ‘all the problems caused by people from x, y and z’. The statistics show this too. https://www.dw.com/en/in-germany-discrimination-is-on-the-rise/a-72772311

If the underlying assumption is that people with children will be cared for by their children, I think it's a mistake to assume that. Some adult children can't care for their parents, because they are in another country/have disabilities themselves/the parent's care needs are too complex, and some are really not temperamentally suited to it. Some parents don't even want that arrangement. I've got no intention of being cared for by mine and I don't think it would be fair on them to expect it. When I need care, I want to go into a care home.

Yes but in Germany your children might have to pay for your care home if they earn enough.

And those childfree people are also paying for maternity leave, healthcare and pensions for others as well.

How does this balance with them paying more for elder care?

I wonder how that works for people like me. I was brought up by my grandparents from the age of 7 because of the neglect and abuse of my parents. I wonder if I’d be expected to fund the father I didn’t see from the age of 7, or my grandparents, or both, or neither.

You would pay for your parents unless you were adopted by your grandparents.

I wasn’t adopted. Legally removed from my parents, but not adopted.

The idea of being forced to pay the care home fees of the man who burned me with an iron as punishment at 6 is horrific. Especially as he never worked due to alcoholism and drug addiction so wouldn’t pay for my grandparents. But I guess any system is going to have issues with circumstances outwith the norm.

Exactly. There would be issues on both sides. You wouldn’t want to pay for care for absolute arsehole parents who did nothing for you. I wouldn’t want to pay tax more due to the fact I only ever had multiple miscarriages and no living children. And if rules like that were brought in we’d both need to suck it up most likely.

So having children makes you a model citizen?

The level of whataboutery on here is nuts. The people IN GERMANY on this thread have explained more than once that children can be forced to pay towards their parents care home. Therefore it STANDS TO REASON if you dont have children they cant be forced to help pay and so you need to pay for an insurance policy. Thats it. Doesn't matter if you are childless by choice or not, its purely financial.

Only if they earn a very high income. Adult children on average wages do not have to do this. Which will be a lot of the population.

I read your post OP and wondered whether the child free would have more disposable money, as they won't have had to fund bringing up children...which is incredibly expensive.

Ahhh, this makes sense now!