Germany begins paying old age pensions on…

Germany begins paying old age pensions on January 1, 1891, as a consequence of Otto von Bismarck's social legislation, the Old Age and Disability Insurance Bill in 1889.

The Old Age Pension program, financed by a tax on workers, is originally designed to provide a pension annuity for workers who reached the age of seventy years, though this will be lowered to sixty-five years in 1916.

It will sometimes be claimed that at the time life expectancy for the average Prussian was forty-five years; in fact, this figure is due to the very high infant mortality and high maternal death rate from childbirth of this era.

An adult entering into insurance under the scheme would in fact on average live to seventy years of age, a figure used in the actuarial assumptions included in the legislation.