Poverty levels in the Federal Republic of Germany are at an all-time high, according to the latest poverty report. “Poverty in Germany has never been so high and regional disparities have never been as deep as they are today. In terms of poverty, Germany is a deeply divided republic,” says Ulrich Schneider, Managing Director of the Paritätischer Gesamtverband. The proportion of people in Germany who have to be considered poor has jumped from 15.0% (2012) to 15.5% (2013) in just one year. In purely mathematical terms, this means an increase from 12.1 to 12.5 million people. The federal states of Bremen, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are most affected, according to the report by the Paritätischer Gesamtverband. For the first time, the Paritätische also highlights special risk groups in its report on poverty trends. According to the report, the highest risk of poverty of all households was among single parents at 43%. According to the association, particular attention should also be paid to pensioners: “There is no other group in Germany that has seen even a remotely comparable increase in poverty in recent years. We are dealing with a landslide in terms of poverty policy,” warned Schneider in view of the 48% increase in poverty in this group since 2006. Frieder Otto Wolf went on to say about the current report that great social inequality threatens, undermines and even abolishes fundamental humanistic values such as the right to self-determination and participation. This is already a frightening reality for millions of people, as the poverty report illustrates. “I see clear evidence in the figures of a progressive economic and cultural barbarization, which a part of our population has unfortunately turned a blind eye to so far.” However, the constantly growing inequality also affects many citizens who are not yet considered poor according to the report’s definition of poverty. “You don’t have to have an income below the poverty line to feel the consequences. The loss of self-determination and participation is gradual and can therefore be felt even above the subsistence level,” Wolf continued. Cultural losses are expressed in many forms: “For example, when young people decide not to have children for financial reasons. And when parents don’t have the money to organize a naming ceremony for a newborn, it’s not just the speakers at the ceremony who feel the impact, but also family members and friends. If more and more single parents are struggling to make ends meet, the dance teacher or soccer coach will also feel it at some point. Citizens who lose the feeling of finding political support in existential hardship lose their sense of the value of democratic participation. People who cannot afford to think in solidarity become more open to nationalist, xenophobic and other inhumane ideologies.” Attempts to relativize the fact of growing social inequality should be consistently questioned.
“It distorts the view of existing poverty conditions in a grotesque way to remind people of the catastrophic situation in other countries. Poverty does not only exist where people lack sufficient meals or warm accommodation. Participation in social life, education and opportunities for realization are humanistic benchmarks for assessing the true extent of social injustice.” In view of the fact that the political parties alone are not in a position to reverse the huge divide, the President of the Humanist Association called for a fundamental rethink. “We must realize that we need to build very broad social and effective alliances at all levels in order to slow down or even reduce the extreme disparities that have grown over decades,” said Wolf. Frieder Otto Wolf criticized the two large churches in Germany. These have so far “not sufficiently steered their enormous influence in the right direction” on issues of social justice. Finally, he appealed to the media to assume their special responsibility together with the humanistically-minded part of civil society and with the inclusion of all faiths. “The escalating poverty conditions are the source of numerous other open problems and conflicts, both in Germany and in other countries,” said Wolf. This must be made clear time and again in the interests of society as a whole. “There must be no taboos when it comes to presenting the forms, extent, causes and consequences of poverty and inequality.”
