The amount of retirement pay is determined by the length and level of the insured person's contributions. Contributions in 1995 were scheduled to amount to 18.6 percent of an employee's annual gross income up to a maximum of DM93,600 in the old Länder and DM76,800 in the new Länder , with the employee and employer each paying half. In the early 1990s, the average retirement pension amounted to about DM1,600 per month for retired persons over the age of sixty. This meant that Germany had the fourth-highest pensions in Europe, surpassed only by Luxemburg, France, and Denmark. In 1957 legislation was passed that required pensions to be indexed, that is, raised according to average wage increases.