Poverty, wealth and income: Poverty among children and the elderly in Germany, 2005-2017

The frequency of children in Germany being affected by poverty is disproportionately high. In the period from 2005 to 2017 the poverty rate of children under the age of 18 was continuously above that of the total population. In 2005, 19.5 per cent of all children were living below the poverty line, i.e. 4.8 percentage points more than the population average. In recent years the trend has been for poverty rates to converge: for instance, in 2015 the child poverty rate was only 4.0 percentage points above the total poverty rate. This is due predominantly to a higher poverty rate in the total population. In 2016 the difference rose again to 4.5 percentage points. The rise in child poverty since is due primarily to the immigration of refugees.

On the other hand, people aged 65-plus are less frequently poor than the population average. There is evidence of a rising trend, however: whereas the proportion of elderly people affected by poverty in 2005 was 11 per cent and thus 3.7 percentage points below the population average, in recent years the elderly poverty rate has increasingly approximated that of the total population and reached 14.8 per cent in 2016. The poverty rate among the elderly decreased in 2017 weakly for the first time in a long while about 0.2 percentage points to 14.6 per cent.

Until 2011 the data were based on the census in 1987. Since then the census 2011 has been used for the calculations. Therefore, data before and after 2011 are not fully comparable.

References

Amtliche Sozialberichterstattung des Bundes und der Länder (Official System Of Social Reporting)