The old-age pension is the basis of a beautiful, carefree, and decent third age. If declining health forces us into a retirement home, a portion of our pension goes for the retirement home maintenance allowance. The amount of old-age pension and retirement home costs change throughout the years. The paper analyses years of service, retirements, and pension amounts throughout the years. It then compares how pension and retirement home maintenance allowance change. The data regarding pension amount was obtained from the Pension and Disability Insurance Institute of Slovenia, and retirement home costs from publicly accessible data.
We analyzed how the old-age pension has changed based on sex and retirement year, then inspected if the retirement home costs and pension amount increase proportionally. The analysis also considered the COVID-19 situation and its impact on pension and maintenance allowance. Based on the results, we rejected the first hypothesis since between 2012 and today, the women’s pension was higher than men's. We completely rejected the second hypothesis: results show that the old-age pension after year 2000 is lower than before that year. The third hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that the retirement home maintenance allowance has drastically increased compared to the daily maintenance allowance, which confirms their disproportionate change.
Due to the COVID-19 situation, retired individuals were entitled to a one-time solidarity allowance, as well as maintenance allowance coverage if their relatives took them into home care.
We believe that the old-age pensions should be equal for both genders. We propose a uniform increase of retirement home maintenance allowance based on the pension increase. Our belief – maybe unrealistic – is that it would be dignified for all Slovenian residents to have access to care if needed, regardless of their pension amount.
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