Population projection

11 December 2025 By 2035, one quarter of Germany's population will be aged 67 or over

In Germany, one person in four will be aged 67 or older in 2035. This is the conclusion reached by all variants of the 16^th coordinated population projection, which the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) presented at a press conference in Berlin on 11 December 2025. By way of comparison, just one person in five was 67 years or older, and therefore of retirement age, in 2024. "The baby boomer generation is currently in the middle of transitioning from working life to retirement. Much smaller birth cohorts will follow", says Karsten Lummer, head of the "Population" department at the Federal Statistical Office. "All calculation variants indicate that the number of people aged 67 and over will increase steadily up to 2038. Depending on how life expectancy increases, there will then be 20.5 to 21.3 million people of pensionable age in Germany. Compared with today, that represents an increase of 3.8 to 4.5 million", explains Elke Loichinger, head of the "Demographic analyses and model calculations, natural population change" section at the Federal Statistical Office. Depending on the calculation variant, the share of people aged 67 and over will increase from 20% in 2024 to between 25% and 27% in 2038.

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