One month before the general election, a new topic comes into focus, which clearly shows the differences between the leading parties: child poverty.

The Green Chairwoman Annalena Baerbock takes the position that the solidarity surcharge on income tax cannot be abolished because the state needs the money to increase social benefits for children in Hartz IV households.

She had an exchange of blows with the CDU chairman Armin Laschet.

"The solos for top earners that you want to abolish, Mr. Laschet, I want to use this 10 billion euros to finally bring children out of poverty in our rich country," she said in the debate on the top candidates on TV station RTL .

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Laschet, however, opposed the assessment that higher social benefits are the key to opening up unemployed parents and their children a way out of need.

"You help the children by helping them, and especially their parents, to get out of Hartz IV," he said.

"Getting the economy going, creating more work and more opportunities - then the best thing we can do is to fight poverty." In contrast, SPD candidate Olaf Scholz agreed with Baerbock and added that stronger pension increases were also necessary to combat poverty.

Technically not undisputed publication

"Every fifth child lives in poverty," said Baerbock, justifying the Greens' demand to introduce a new, independent "basic child protection" instead of the current Hartz IV basic income for children from needy families. Germany is one of the richest countries in the world, and yet some children don't even get a satchel when they start school.

This position was surprising insofar as there has been a school supplies package for school children from Hartz IV households in addition to the usual standard benefits for around ten years. This means that a lump sum of 154.50 euros is paid out for each school year; apart from other needs that the job center can finance on request. This was not deepened in the debate. With their basic child protection model, for which social organizations are promoting in a similar form, the Greens want to transfer 547 euros a month for every child in an unemployed household - consisting of a monthly "guarantee" of 290 euros, which would also be paid for children of wealthy parents , and a low-income supplement of up to 257 euros. For children who receive the “guaranteed amount”, there would also be further grants for school supplies of 150 euros per year.

In the Hartz IV system, the monthly standard rate is currently staggered depending on age and ranges from 283 euros for preschool children to 373 euros for young people. The child benefit entitlements of Hartz IV households are offset against this. For preschool children, the monthly cash benefit would almost double with the 547 euros. However, child benefit should no longer exist in the green model. Together with the existing child allowance for low-wage earners, this would no longer apply - and on top of that, the tax-free child allowance would be abolished. For families in which the tax exemption has so far reduced the tax burden by more than 290 euros per child, in addition to the continuation of the “Soli”, there would be a higher tax burden at this point.

Baerbock's statement that “every fifth child lives in poverty” can be found in a technically controversial publication by the Bertelsmann Foundation from 2020, which uses an expanded definition of poverty and derived the number of 2.8 million poor children from this: On the one hand, it classifies children as poor if they live in a household which, according to the statistical definition, is “at risk of poverty”. This is the case when the household income is less than 60 percent of the median income in society.

On the other hand, the publication classifies all children from Hartz IV households as poor - even if their income is above the poverty risk threshold thanks to Hartz IV transfers. According to Bertelsmann, this applies to around 460,000 children. If this definition were to continue to be applied, the statistically measured child poverty would probably increase due to the introduction of the proposed basic child benefit - because the group of beneficiaries would grow with the higher benefits.