The danger of ever-increasing poverty lurks in German citizens

According to the report of the international group Tasnim news agency, publication ” Focus wrote in an article: According to statistics in Germany, 21.2 percent of the German population is at risk of poverty or social exclusion. This statistic includes about 17.7 million people. Social researcher Andreas Hertoks analyzes the current figures of the Federal Statistical Office and questions the role of the German welfare state.

Based on the latest data of the Federal Statistical Office Germany 21.2% of the German population is at risk of poverty or social exclusion. These figures come from the 2023 Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), in which around 40,000 households are surveyed each year in the form of a micro-census.

Experience has also shown that poverty has enormous consequences for the affected people. The financial burden usually leads to “mental and perhaps physical stress.” Both nutritional status and health status are generally worse in these people than in higher income groups, and feelings of rejection and shame are common among this group. Participation in affairs is often not possible simply because of income.

Growing gap between rich and poor in Germany

WirthschaftsWoche newspaper in Germany also addressed the growing gap between the rich and the poor in Germany and wrote: Since 2009, the Bundesbank has collected data on the wealth of households and how it has developed. With the distribution-based balance sheet in Germany, there is a new dataset that allows for a quarterly analysis of individual household wealth.

The results of this balance sheet show How the various savings of Germans are formed. Accordingly, while poorer households mainly rely on low-risk forms of investment such as deposits and insurance claims, wealthier Germans, on the other hand, mainly invest in capital market instruments such as stocks, real estate or commercial assets.

According to the experts of this survey, in the last few years we have seen a decrease in wealth inequality in Germany.

It is true that net assets have almost doubled during this review. However, since the end of 2021, experts have also observed that growth rates across all wealth groups—especially among the poor half of the population—have fallen sharply. The Bundesbank attributes this, among other things, to the fact that insurance claims have fallen sharply due to valuation changes.

This means that from the end of 2022, the share of households The poor have again fallen slightly out of total net worth – and so inequality has risen again. According to data from the Bundesbank, this increase in inequality should be attributed to recent high inflation rates, tightening of monetary policies and weak economic growth. Ten percent of Germans currently own about 61 percent of all net worth. Less than half still own about 2.3 percent.

The extent to which wealth is evenly distributed can be seen using the Gini coefficient, a statistical measure. To put it into perspective: a Gini value of 0 percent means that everyone has the same income, and 100 percent indicates the opposite. And Germany is currently at the top in terms of income gap.

According to the Bundesbank report, the Gini coefficients of European member states are between 56 and 77 percent. Germany ranks first with 77%, followed by Latvia and Finland. The average in the Eurozone is 71.5%. According to calculations, assets are particularly evenly distributed in Slovakia, Malta and Cyprus.

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