Retirement
Text and graphs by Nikolaj Kristensen. Photos by Michala Clante Bendixen
Refugees in Denmark are entitled to State Pension. However, the Danish State Pension is designed in such a way that you must have lived in Denmark for a number of years to be entitled to the full amount. The longer you have lived in Denmark, the higher the rate you will receive. The same thing goes for the so-called elderly cheque. Stricter rules for accruing pension rights were introduced on July 1, 2025.
The State Pension consists of a basic amount and a pension supplement. In 2025, the basic amount was DKK 7,198 per month before tax, while the pension supplement was DKK 8,329 per month for singles and DKK 4,262 for people who are married or cohabiting. Refugees are also entitled to the elderly cheque, which in 2025 amounted to DKK 25,700 per year. The pension supplement is dependent on your other income revenues. You are, however, allowed to do some without having your supplement reduced.
To be entitled to the full State Pension, you must have lived 9/10th of the time from you turned 15 until you reached the public retirement age. A refugee who reaches the public retirement age this year will have to have fled to Denmark in 1978 at the latest to be entitled to the full amount.
A 67-year-old (the current public retirement age) will have to have lived in Denmark for 9/10th of the 52 years that have passed since she turned 15, amounting to approx. 47 years.
Most refugees haven't lived in Denmark for that long and will therefore see their pensions reduced. Reduced State Pension goes by the name fractural pension — 'brøkpension' in Danish — as you receive a fraction of the full amount depending on how long you have lived in Denmark.
If, for example, you reached the public retirement age in 2025 and fled to Denmark in 2002, you will have lived just about half — 23 — of the 47 years needed to be entitled to the full amount. Therefore, you will receive half of the amount.
BY WHICH YEAR MUST YOU HAVE ARRIVED IN DENMARK IN ORDER TO RECEIVE...
Both the basic amount, the pension supplement and the elderly cheque are reduced if you haven't lived in Denmark for long enough. If the elderly cheque is reduced so much that it amounts to less than DKK 200 it will not be paid out at all.
If you receive a fractural pension, you are also entitled to certain supplements. Local authorities can pay supplements to financially disadvantaged state pensioners if they assess the pensioner to be in need. The supplements may be for the general cost of living or to cover specific expenses, such as moving expenses, buying new glasses, or increased heating and electricity bills. The most financially disadvantaged pensioners may qualify for a needs-based supplement.
A fractural pension can be supplemented up to the level of the cash benefit rates. New cash benefit rates were implemented on July 1, 2025, which means that some recipients of fractural pension will see their supplements reduced.
Refugees are also entitled to a variety of other supplements, such as heating supplement, health supplements and housing benefits. These supplements will not be reduced for recipients of fractural pensions.
You may also be entitled to Early Retirement Pension if local authorities assess your ability to work to be significantly and permanently reduced. This could be due to the many physical and psychological costs of fleeing. You must however have lived in Denmark for at least 3 years to be eligible for Early Retirement Pension. Similar to the State Pension, the rate of the Early Retirement Pension is dependent on how long you have lived in Denmark. To many refugees, this means that they will receive only a fraction of the Early Retirement Pension.
If you apply for voluntary repatriation, you are allowed to take your meagre pension with you for a number of years. See more on return and repatriation here.
Reduction of pensions
The current rules for accruing State Pension was introduced on July 1, 2025. Previously, you had to have lived in Denmark for 40 years from turning 15 until the public retirement age in order to be entitled to the full amount. The new rules mean that you must have lived in Denmark for even longer to receive the same amount. In the future, more refugees will receive a lower amount than they would under the old rules.
According to the old rules, for example, you had to have lived in Denmark for 20 years in order to receive half of the full amount. Today, you must have lived here for 23 years to receive the same amount. The number of years will increase with increases in the public retirement age.
Previously, the number of years that refugees had lived in their country of origin or another country where they were considered refugees were included when metering out their State Pension. This was to shield refugees from poverty in old age, as your age at the time of being forced to flee is not something you can decide.
The Danish Parliament voted to abolish those rules in 2015 so that, going forward, the rules of fractural pension for immigrants would also apply to refugees.
Forced into poverty
Research published by VIVE — the Danish Center for Social Science Research — in 2022, showed that between 17-25% of elderly refugees lived below the poverty line even before the changes mentioned above took effect. In comparison, only 1% of ethnic Danish elders lived in poverty. This is to a large degree due to the Danish State Pension rules, as the full amount including the pension supplement is enough to put pensioners above the line of poverty.
17-25% of elderly refugees lived below the poverty line even before rules changes took effect. In comparison, only 1% of ethnic Danish elders lived in poverty.
In most cases, elderly refugees will not have been able to work up occupational or private pensions, as they generally have fewer years to do so than ethnic Danes. They also typically have higher unemployment and work for lower wages. This is partly due to the fact that the qualifications they have earned in their countries of origin are difficult to transfer to the Danish labour market. Furthermore, refugees have to deal with the many challenges that feeling from one's own country can entail.
VIVE's research also showed that half of elderly refugees had lived in Denmark for 25 years or less.
Many elderly refugees therefore have only their State Pension to live off. As the State Pension is reduced due to their time of stay in Denmark, may are forced into poverty.
VIVE concludes that the high poverty rates among refugees are expected to rise 'significantly' as a result of the fractural pension, and that the rule change will probably result in refugees cutting back on food, heating, electricity and medicine while turning to local authorities for supplements in order to maintain a tolerable standard of living.
Elderly refugees will like also have to depend more on help from their adult children. But for some refugees, fleeing their country meant that they have no family in Denmark at all. And even if they do have children, the children may be less likely to help out to the same extent as tradition dictates in their countries of origin, as they have grown up with the culture in Denmark where care for the elderly is to a large extent considered a matter for the public sector.
Especially hard on women
The fractural pension is hard on refugees, but even more so for women.
VIVE's research shows that elderly female refugees are more likely to be poor than men. This is in part due to them having lived in Denmark for a shorter period of time, as many have come to the country through family reunification. They have also generally been more unemployed.
Furthermore, women generally live longer than men, and many elderly women end up living alone because they outlive their husbands.
Their shorter stay in Denmark have a particularly large impact on their pension. Many elderly refugees arrived in the country when they were in their forties or older, and more than a fifth of the women did not live in Denmark at all when they were 55 years old, according to VIVE. These women will receive a very reduced fractural pension.
In our report 'They don't know how much stress we have' Refugees Welcome have described how female refugees are generally worse off than men, also in terms of finances and health.
Consequences to health
The economically difficult situation that elderly refugees are forced into as a result of the fractural pension affects their well-being and health.
They may be hindered in taking advange of municipal services for the elderly that require some sort of payment, such as paying for a nursing home. And their financial situation may prevent them from participating in activities with other elderly people, even if they would like to do so.
Instead, they risk becoming isolated and lonely.
A 2012 study has shown that close to half of elderly people with immigrant backgrounds over the age of 65 feel lonely. And the Danish Refugee Council has shown that many such elders feel very lonely in their daily lives and have no family or network in Denmark. In many cases, their feelings of loneliness are exacerbated by the fact that they feel like strangers in the country and find it difficult to form new relationships due to poor health or inadequate mastery of the language.
Loneliness impairs people's quality of life and has a negative impact on both mental and physical health. Research shows that refugees are generally more at-risk of long-term and mental illness than ethnic Danes.
A lack of financial resources and Danish language skills also make elderly refugees particularly vulnerable to mistreatment, partly because they cannot afford to pay for an interpreter in the healthcare system, which is required if you have lived in Denmark for more than three years.
Will affect more in the future
Today, 18,188 people in Denmark aged 65 or above originate from one of ten countries from which Denmark has received a large number of refugees through the years. These countries are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Syria and Vietnam.
Looking at the people who will reach the public retirement age in the coming years, 42,205 people have roots in one of these countries.
This means that the group of refugees above the public retirement age will increase dramatically in coming years.
ELDERS IN DENMARK, BY ORIGIN AND AGE
These include refugees from the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Lebanon and Somalia who came to Denmark in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as Syrians and Iranians. For example, an Iraqi refugee who came to Denmark at the age of 45 in 2003 will turn 67 in 2025. In addition, many older people have fled here from Ukraine in recent years.
The gender composition of the group will also change. Today, 44% of people aged 65 or above from the ten refugee countries are women, while women make up 47% of those aged 50-64.
In the future, there will be more refugees on retirement, and a larger proportion of them will be women — groups which we know are severely affected by Danish pension rules.
ELDERS IN DENMARK WITH ORIGIN IN THE 10 REFUGEE COUNTRIES, BY GENDER AND AGE
Family care
Studies have shown that elderly people with minority background do not make use of care and nursing services to the same extent as ethnic Danish elders, and that fewer of them live in nursing homes.
Some ethnic minority elderly choose to be cared for by their families in their own homes instead of using municipal home care or moving into a nursing home. This may be due to cultural traditions, where there is an expectation that children will care for their parents when they grow old. Due to such traditions, it may be considered shameful to ‘hand over’ one's elderly parents to ‘strangers’ in home care or by sending them to a nursing home. Others choose to do it because they speak little or no Danish and find it difficult to communicate their needs to the home care staff.
Some elderly people with minority background therefore welcome the opportunity to have a ‘self-appointed helper’ under Section 94 of the Danish Social Services Act. The scheme allows them to appoint a family member — usually a spouse, daughter or daughter-in-law — to perform the work that would otherwise be provided by municipal home care services.
However, the scheme has some issues. It can lead to the elderly not receiving the right professional care, and that the helper does not receive the necessary support and relief.
The self-appointed helper may also feel tied to the home, partly because it is difficult to have another job when you have to provide care during the day. And since the helper is often a relative of the elder, it can be difficult to determine when a task is being performed as part of the job and when it is something you do as a family member. Helpers may therefore end up spending more time on care than what they get paid for.
Programmes for the elderly
Refugees and immigrants often dream of returning to their home countries when they grow old. However, over the years, many find themselves becoming strangers to their countries of origin while their ties to Denmark grow stronger as they want to live close to their children and grandchildren.
For many elderly, it is therefore very important to be able to spend time with others who speak the same language and have the same cultural background as themselves.
However, too few elderly of minority backgrounds participate in activities and communities provided by municipalities and volunteer communities. And those who do are usually the most resourceful.
However, there are a number of programmes available, especially for elderly women from minority backgrounds, such as “Bydelsmødre” (Neighbourhood Mothers). Another is “Besøg på Modersmål” (Visits in Your Mother Tongue), a programme for older people who, due to language and cultural barriers, do not have much contact with others in their everyday lives. Through the programme, elders get a visit by someone who speaks their native language and has the same cultural background. In Copenhagen, FAKTI offers companionship and support to particularly vulnerable women.
Danish Refugee Council offers programmes that seek to prevent loneliness among the ethnic minority elderly by involving them in inclusive communities with others who have the same background.
In addition, there are network houses for both men and women with immigrant and refugee backgrounds run by municipalities and housing companies. The church can also be an important meeting place where older people can join a community with others who have the same background as themselves.