Nine - The individual in ageing Germany: how the self-employed plan for their old age

Summary

Introduction

Due to an increasing life expectancy in most Western countries, individuals live longer than their parents and their grandparents did. At the same time, traditional support mechanisms, for example pension schemes and health institutions, are challenged because of demographic changes, tight job markets and altered family patterns. Thus, social and demographic changes have become important structural features of contemporary lifecourses, and welfare states emphasise the importance of individual foresight for later life regarding health and social networks as well as adequate income and housing. Against this background, the topic of retirement planning addresses the individual attempt to tackle uncertainty about the future. It symbolises a complex equation between chances and potentials – but also risks – for retiring comfortably. The questions of ‘when’ and ‘what’ in retirement planning depend on individual expectations in old age and planning behaviour as well as socioeconomic conditions and social policy context (Street and Desai, 2012).

From the psychological perspective, retirement planning refers, for example, to the concepts of foresighted decision-making and goal achievement. Following the sociological approach, retirement planning is framed by social institutions and socioeconomic resources such as qualification level or work characteristics (Ruhm, 1990; Settersten, 2003; Cate and John, 2007; Komp et al, 2010; Cobb- Clark and Stillman, 2009; Noone et al, 2012; Radl, 2012). Planning for later life also draws on the concepts of lifecourse approach, life stages, destandardisation and differentiation. While the lifecourse concept examines the holistic, socially embedded individual life history and the influence of prior life experiences on today's outcomes, the concept of life stages focuses on age-related sequential stages, such as childhood, adulthood and old age (Grenier, 2012). Kohli (1985, 2007), developing the idea of an institutionalised lifecourse that is shaped by social institutions and regulations.

In recent years, concepts of destandardisation, differentiation and individualisation of the lifecourse in postmodern societies have enriched academic lifecourse research (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992). The concept of destandardisation, for example, describes a reduced influence of social institutions on the lifecourse and the modification of distinct life stages due to increasing flexibility of labour markets and welfare arrangements (Brückner and Mayer, 2005). The approach of differentiation of lifecourses criticises the universal view of life histories and points to the variation of lifecourses as a consequence of different historical and social arrangements (Mayer, 2009).