Posted by Unknown / Monday, September 12, 2016 / No comments / Latest News
Child Poverty On The Increase In Germany Despite Steady Growth and Low Unemployment Figure
According to the study, the percentage of minors in the states of former West Germany whose families live off Hart IV, the most basic form of welfare payment, rose from 12.4 percent in January 2011 to 13.2 percent in 2015.
In the states of former East Germany
on the other hand, the number dropped by 2.4 percent in the same period, but at
21.6 percent, the East still lies far above the rate in the West.
In raw numbers, the data shows
that 1.9 million minors were growing up in poverty in Germany in 2015, an increase
of 52,000 on the previous year.
The researchers warn that
children in poverty risk getting stuck there, pointing to evidence that 57.2
percent of children between the ages of seven and 15 had been supported by
basic welfare for a period of at least three years.
“The longer that a child lives on
welfare, the worse the consequences are,” said Anette Stein, families expert at
the Bertelsmann Foundation.
Numerous studies conducted over
recent years show that children who grow up dependent on welfare are more
socially isolated, suffer more regularly from health issues and encounter more
problems during their education than contemporaries whose families do not
receive social welfare payments.
Most vulnerable to poverty are
children of single parents or those with a large number of brothers and
sisters.
At almost one million, more than
half the children growing up with Hartz IV, are from single-parent households.
Meanwhile 36 percent of the 1.9 million children in Harz IV homes have at least
two siblings.
Children who grow up in cities
are also much more likely to have parents who receive social welfare - in some
urban centres, this is the case for over one in three children.
The worst affected regions are
Bremen Harbour, where 40.5 percent of all children grow up on Hartz IV, and
Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, where this is the case for 38.5 percent
of children.
In Berlin almost one in three children live in homes
dependent on basic social welfare.
By contrast in the wealthy
southern states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, 6.8 and 8 percent of children
live on Hartz IV respectively, the lowest numbers in the country.
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