Overview
- Nearly half of Germany’s social expenditures go to old-age pensions, with healthcare taking about 16% of total government outlays.
- Education receives 9.3% of spending, the lowest share in the peer comparison cited by the study.
- Public investment is around 6% and personnel about 17%, while spending on public administration climbed from roughly 7.2% to about 11% since 2001.
- Measured against GDP, defense spending is about 1.1% for Germany despite a roughly 2.3% share of total expenditures, trailing recent Nordic levels on the GDP metric.
- The IW urges the federal government to resist further expansion of state activity, especially social spending, as the report coincides with Bundestag budget debates and pension negotiations.