The number of households receiving housing benefit fell by 3.7 percent between 2020 and 2021.
This was announced by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden on Monday.
As of the end of the year, it fell by around 22,900 to 595,300.
At the end of 2021, 1.5 percent of all private main residence households received housing benefit.
Housing benefit is a state social benefit that is paid to low-income households to improve their housing situation.
The amount depends on income, rent, the number of household members and, since 2021, also on a CO2 component to reduce heating costs.
Federal and state housing benefit expenditure rose by seven percent year-on-year and amounted to 1.4 billion euros in 2021.
According to the Federal Office, this was presumably due to the introduction of the new CO2 component, since the total number of recipient households fell in the same period.
The average monthly entitlement of so-called pure housing benefit households was 192 euros in 2021, which was 15 euros more than in the previous year 2020.