Poverty among Plenty, Daily Brief March 24, 2025

Germany. The industrial powerhouse of Europe. The world’s third richest economy.

Germany has a poverty problem.

Despite the country’s vast wealth, the German social security system is simply failing many people.

How many? Let’s look at some numbers.

The latest official statistics show 14.4 percent of Germany’s population live in poverty. That’s more than 12 million people.

Single-parent families and older women make up a disproportionate number of those in poverty. The government considers 40 percent of Germany’s households with a lone parent raising children to be “at risk of poverty or social exclusion.”

Social security support often doesn’t even get a family up to the poverty line, let alone above it. There’s a gap.

For example, a single-parent household with two children receives €1,198 in social security benefits. But the poverty threshold is €1,626. That’s a gap of 26 percent. The gap for a single adult living alone is 51 percent.

Among people 65 and older, more than 18 percent are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, older women even more so.

This is in part because women essentially get shortchanged in pension calculations. Childrearing years are unpaid and not equally counted as work. There’s a significant gender pay gap generally. Women make up two-thirds of the people in marginal, low-wage employment.

Such things reduce their pension contributions over the years, and thus, in the German system, their pension payments later in life.

There are basic pension supplements, but they are often not enough to lift people above the poverty line.

Numbers… Calculations... Thresholds… They tell you one part of the story.

To understand the full picture, you have to listen to the people affected. This is what Human Rights Watch has done for a new report, more than two years in the making.

People described difficulties affording adequate food, and paying for rent, utilities, and health and education costs.

A 42-year-old single working mother of three living in rural Saxony said: “I can’t afford to properly feed my children. It’s a bitter feeling when all we have at the end of the month is bread and butter…”

A 71-year-old woman pensioner who lives alone in a city in the Ruhr Valley said: “…the support from the government simply isn’t enough. Life is expensive. At home I stay under a blanket and drink tea, coffee, or soup to stay warm. There’s not much else to do.”

Surely, the world’s third richest economy can do better than this.

In fact, the German government is legally obliged to do better. Germany has signed international treaties promising to uphold the human rights to social security and to an adequate standard of living.

Political parties are now in coalition talks to form a new government. They should take note and commit to improving Germany’s failing social security system.