Arbeitslosenversicherung für Selbstständige: Wer kann sich (nicht) versichern?

"The German voluntary unemployment insurance for self-employed persons offers business founders the opportunity to protect themselves against a loss of income. However, the option is used by very few people: In the past years, less than 4,000 insurance contracts per year have been concluded – while, at the same time, there were more than 200,000 full-time company foundations per year. Reasons for this could be the lack of demand for the insurance as well as the barriers to entry. Founders wanting to insure need prior insurance times in the unemployment insurance: Either by being insured for at least 12 months during the base period of 30 months before founding the company or by receiving unemployment benefits directly before founding, which also requires prior insurance. In this report, panel data are used to analyze whether the low usage rate could be a result of these eligibility requirements. The report shows that around half of business founders could enter the insurance. 23 percent of founders do not have access to the insurance. For the remaining 27 percent, the access cannot be determined clearly on an individual basis. However, this group is, for a large part, constituted by people that are already self-employed and found a new company. These founders could be insured in their previous self-employment. Assuming that these self-employed insure with the same probability as the self-employed overall, the share of founders without the option to insure themselves is close to 40 percent. Currently, there are around 230.000 business foundations per year. This would mean that 95.000 persons have no option to safeguard themselves with voluntary insurance. This is most often true for student founders and former self-employed persons who have not signed up for the voluntary insurance previously. Persons with low education levels also lack access more often than the average. A reduction of necessary prior insurance months or a prolongation of the base period could offer more people the option to insure themselves. The effects are limited, though. Even a large reform would leave more than a quarter of all founders without the insurance option. Among founders who have access to the insurance, more than 90 percent make no use of it. The reasons for this cannot be established here. Previous surveys of founders indicate that many of them feel that the insurance does not pay off or that they won’t need it. Others do not manage to insure themselves in the first three months after business establishment like the law requires. At the same time, the attractiveness of the insurance seems to be a problem, too, as evidenced by the low usage rate among people with access. Other European countries, e.g. Sweden, have managed to reach far higher usage rates. However, the insurance, for self-employed persons as well as for other workers, is heavily subsidized out of the general tax revenues there." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))