When your health no longer allows you to work
A serious illness, an accident or a long period of mental strain can mean that working is only possible to a limited extent or not at all. On top of the health worries comes a financial question: what will I live on once sickness benefit ends? This is what the German disability pension (Rente wegen Erwerbsminderung, often called EM-Rente) is for. It is paid by the statutory pension insurance and is meant to at least partly replace lost earnings until the old-age pension begins.
This guide explains who is entitled, how the pension is calculated and which rules apply in 2026. You can recalculate every example with your own figures using the disability pension calculator.
Full or partial reduced earning capacity?
What counts is not your previous occupation but how many hours you can still work on the general labour market, meaning in any ordinary job. This is set out in § 43 of the German Social Code Book VI (SGB VI):
Full reduced earning capacity applies if, due to illness or disability, you can work less than three hours a day for the foreseeable future.
Partial reduced earning capacity applies if you can work three to under six hours a day.
If you can work six hours or more, you are not considered to have reduced earning capacity, even if you can no longer do your own job. People born before 1961 still enjoy transitional protection for occupational disability; for everyone younger, only private insurance covers this risk.
A special case is the so-called labour market pension: if you have partial reduced earning capacity but no suitable part-time job, you can still receive the full pension. This applies as long as the part-time labour market is practically closed to you.
The requirements at a glance
Besides the medical side, insurance conditions must be met. You need the general qualifying period of five years, and in the last five years before the onset of reduced earning capacity at least three years must be covered by compulsory contributions. This five-year window is extended by periods such as child-raising, illness or unemployment without contributions, and schooling after your 17th birthday. After an accident at work or an occupational disease, the qualifying period may be deemed fulfilled early.
In addition, the principle of rehabilitation before pension applies. The pension insurance first checks whether medical rehabilitation or vocational retraining could restore your ability to work. Only if this fails or is hopeless is the pension granted. Read more in Applying for a disability pension.
The pension formula
The disability pension is calculated with the same formula as every statutory pension:
Monthly pension = personal earnings points × pension type factor × current pension value
Earnings points reflect your working life so far. Anyone who earns exactly the average wage of all insured people for one year receives one earnings point. Your total so far is shown in your annual pension statement.
The pension type factor is 1.0 for full and 0.5 for partial reduced earning capacity (§ 67 SGB VI). The partial pension is exactly half the full pension, because it is assumed that you can still earn the rest.
The current pension value is the euro amount per earnings point. Since 1 July 2026 it has been €42.52 nationwide, after a pension increase of 4.24%.
Two levers make the disability pension special: the credited period, which increases your earnings points, and the reduction, which lowers them again via the access factor.
The credited period: treated as if you had kept working
Someone who loses their earning capacity at 45 or 50 would receive only a very small pension without compensation, because many contribution years are missing. The credited period (Zurechnungszeit, § 59 SGB VI) closes this gap: the time from the onset of reduced earning capacity up to a certain age is valued as if you had continued earning at the average of your previous contributions.
Up to which age depends on the year the pension starts (§ 253a SGB VI). For a pension starting in 2026, the credited period ends at 66 years and 3 months. For 2027 it is 66 years and 4 months, 2028 66 years and 6 months, 2029 66 years and 8 months, 2030 66 years and 10 months. From a 2031 start it runs until your 67th birthday.
The value of the credited period results from the so-called overall performance valuation. Simplified: your earnings points so far are divided by the number of months since your 17th birthday. Months with non-contributory periods such as school or university are not counted. Gaps without any insurance period, however, reduce the average. That is why it pays to have your insurance record clarified without gaps before you apply.
The reduction: 10.8% at most
For every month the disability pension begins before the end of the month in which you turn 65, the access factor drops by 0.003, i.e. 0.3% (§ 77(2) no. 3 SGB VI). If the pension begins before age 62, it is calculated as if it began at 62. More than 36 months of reduction are therefore impossible: 36 × 0.3% = 10.8%. So anyone younger than 62 at the onset almost always has exactly this maximum reduction.
If you have 40 years of compulsory contributions, credit periods or substitute periods, the reduction only applies to a pension starting before 63 instead of 65 (§ 77(4) SGB VI). The credited period does not count towards these 40 years.
The reduction is permanent. It remains when the disability pension turns into an old-age pension at the regular retirement age, because the old-age pension is based on at least the previous personal earnings points. In return, you also keep the credited period in your old-age pension.
Worked example: full disability pension at 50
Ms M. was born in March 1976. In March 2026, after a long illness, she loses her earning capacity in full. According to her pension statement she has 30 earnings points. For simplicity we ignore non-contributory periods.
Step 1: The time-limited pension starts in the seventh calendar month after the onset, i.e. in October 2026. The credited period therefore ends at 66 years and 3 months.
Step 2: 396 months passed between her 17th birthday and the onset. That gives an average of 30 ÷ 396 ≈ 0.0758 earnings points per month, a little over 0.9 per year.
Step 3: The credited period covers 196 months. That adds 196 × 0.0758 ≈ 14.85 earnings points, 44.85 in total.
Step 4: Because the pension starts long before age 62, the maximum reduction applies. 44.85 × 0.892 ≈ 40.00 personal earnings points.
Step 5: 40.00 × 1.0 × €42.52 ≈ €1,701 gross pension per month. Without the credited period it would be only about €1,138, without the reduction about €1,907.
If Ms M. had only partial reduced earning capacity, the pension with a type factor of 0.5 would be about €850.
What is left net
As a pensioner, Ms M. is usually compulsorily insured in pensioners' health insurance (KVdR). She pays 7.3% plus half of her health fund's additional rate — at the 2.9% average that is 8.75% or about €149. Care insurance adds 3.6%, about €61; childless people pay 4.2%. That leaves about €1,491 per month.
Like the old-age pension, the disability pension is taxable at the taxable share of its start year — 84% for a 2026 start. If the pension is her only income, only a small income tax of just under €30 a month is due in the example. How company pensions or rental income change this is shown by the net pension calculator.
Additional earnings are allowed, but limited
You may work alongside the disability pension as long as you stay within your capacity. In 2026 the earnings limit for full reduced earning capacity is €20,763.75 per calendar year, for partial at least €41,527.50. Exceeding it does not cost you the whole pension: 40% of one twelfth of the excess is deducted. Details and examples are in Earning money on a disability pension.
Time limits and pension start
Disability pensions are almost always granted for a limited time, for at most three years at a stretch. After that the pension insurance reviews the case again. After nine years of time-limited payments in total, it is assumed that the condition will not improve, and the pension becomes permanent. A time-limited pension only starts in the seventh calendar month after the onset. This gap is often bridged by sickness benefit, which is paid for up to 78 weeks for the same illness. You can estimate it with the sick pay calculator.
Existing pensions: the supplement under § 307i
People whose disability pension started between 2001 and the end of 2018 did not yet benefit from the longer credited period. To compensate, there has been a supplement of 7.5% or 4.5% since July 2024, which has been a permanent part of the pension since December 2025. More in Disability pension supplement.
Conclusion
The disability pension is often higher than people fear, because the credited period fills the missing contribution years up to the mid-60s. The reduction of at most 10.8% lowers it permanently. With the earnings points from your pension statement, your date of birth and the expected onset, the calculator gives you a realistic estimate. Only the pension insurance's own calculation is binding, though. Free advice is available from the pension insurance's information and advice centres and from its voluntary insurance advisers.