They are many and they are frustrated. More than 280,000 Facebook users have joined forces in the “Fridays against old-age poverty” group to express their outrage over the growing old-age poverty in Germany. “When people have worked hard for decades only to later live in poverty. Then it violates all humanistic rules and also against the Basic Law, ”is their verdict. You wrote it in the info text for the group. Members organize vigils in the country's pedestrian streets and digital space, and they share pictures, statistics, and online articles that underscore their diagnosis. How many Germans are actually threatened with old-age poverty? The headlines in the group's newsfeed give the answer: “A million times!” In another, an expert sums up:"Poverty has eaten its way into the middle of society."
Maja Brankovic
Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, responsible for “Der Volkswirt”.
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Man has his political truths and he can hardly be dissuaded from them.
He hears them on the radio, he sees them on television, he reads them in the newspaper.
And on social media.
If there were a hit list of these truths, rising poverty, especially among retirees, would be right at the front.
Other examples?
Foreigners are particularly often unemployed.
And new: Corona increases the great inequality.
Often in the media, but little known
But is it really that bad for Germany? First of all, the numbers. They show that things are not so bad for us in Germany. The microcensus in 2019, for example, showed that around 16 percent of the entire population are at risk of poverty. The threshold for people living alone was 1074 euros per month. For families of four at 2256 euros. According to the microcensus, pensioners are not at risk of poverty much more frequently than the rest. In their group, the figure is 17 percent.
These figures are often reported - and yet they do not reach large parts of the population, as a new study by three researchers from the Institute of German Economy and the Ruhr University Bochum now shows. It is available to the FAS in advance. Your result, put in a simple formula, is: We are a really pessimistic people.
The study is based on data from a representative survey that the market research institute Respondi carried out for the researchers in August and September 2020.
In order to test the Germans' knowledge of the economic situation in the country, the respondents were given six estimation questions.
They should each answer with a value between 0 and 100 percent.
Four of the six questions were about social issues: Participants were asked to estimate how many out of 100 retirees are affected by poverty and how many out of 100 people in the general population.
Or: how many out of 100 residents in Germany and how many out of 100 foreign residents in this country are looking for a job.
Retirees are no poorer than the rest
In the second step, the researchers evaluated the median for each question, i.e. the estimated value that lies exactly in the middle of the spectrum of the answers given. That means: Half of the participants gave smaller estimates, the other half larger ones. As far as the threat of poverty in the general population is concerned, the participants assumed on average that 30 percent of people are at risk of poverty, far more than the actual 16 percent. The overestimation of the risk of poverty in old age was even clearer: according to the median, the respondents assume that every second pensioner in Germany is at risk. One in four even suspects that almost 70 out of 100 retirees are at risk of poverty.
The extent of unemployment is also greatly overestimated in Germany. In the median, the respondents assumed that 15 out of 100 people of working age and even 39 percent of foreigners are unemployed. At the time of the survey, the total unemployment rate was 6.4 and the rate among foreigners was 15.6 percent. Particularly blatant: every fourth respondent suspected that two thirds of foreigners are unemployed.