The Federal Constitutional Court ensures that parents with several children are better off than childless and smaller families when it comes to statutory long-term care insurance. The contribution rates would have to be adjusted according to the specific number of children by the end of July 2023, the highest German court in Karlsruhe decided according to information on Wednesday (1 BvL 3/18 et al, decision of April 7th). On the other hand, it is okay that the statutory pension and health insurance does not differentiate between parents and those without children.

In the 2001 nursing care insurance case, the court ruled that it was not compatible with the Basic Law for parents to pay the same high contribution rate as the childless – because they made a “generative contribution to the functionality of a pay-as-you-go social security system”. The contribution rates were then adjusted. Since the beginning of this year, that for parents has been 3.05 percent of gross income, and for childless people it has been 3.4 percent.

From the judges’ point of view, however, this falls short: the more children a family has, the greater the effort and the associated costs. “This disadvantage occurs from the second child onwards,” the statement says. “The same contribution burden on parents, regardless of the number of children they have, is not constitutionally justified.” The legislature must remedy this disadvantage.