well as schemes for the independent professions. Private provisions such as life insurance and
private pension insurances, ownership of property as well as maintenance payments made by
children and partners are also taken into account.
Data sources of the AVID:
Source: Dina Frommert and Thorsten Heien (2007)
After the deduction of income tax and statutory contributions for health and old-age
insurance, the net old-age income shown is the sum of benefits due to personal entitlements
arising from the pension schemes described above, including private provisions such as life
insurances and private pension insurances and survivors’ income or benefits, if any, arising
from such schemes. Other sources of income such as earned income or transfer payments, i.e.,
housing subsidies, welfare benefits, and other forms of unearned income, are not taken into
account. In a second step the individual pension insurance accounts of the AVID respondents
are clarified by the (federal or regional) institutions which manage the accounts, the entire
process taking about 18 months. These two datasets are then matched with the respondents’
consent and checked extensively for consistency PT resulting in a highly valid and reliable
dataset on (past) life courses and pension provisions. The design of the survey also allows the
identification of married couples so that at least some measure of “household context” can be
included in the analyses. In a third step the individual (work) biographies are projected to the
age of 65 - at the time of the surveys the legal retirement age in Germany - using a specially
developed micro simulation model. Biographical events like unemployment and long-term
illnesses are taken into account as well as individual decisions to interrupt or end employment
such as housekeeping, childcare or looking after relatives in need of care. The projection is
based on a projection corridor using individual data on the years 1992 to 1996 for the AVID
1996, the projection corridor for the new study is correspondingly longer (1992 to 2002). The