Improving Child Benefits and Addressing Child Poverty in Germany

What is planned?

Basic security means: All children in Germany receive 250 euros per month as before, this is called child benefit. Depending on how much your parents earn, you will receive additional money in the future. It should be easier to submit the application online, and a portal will be set up on the Internet for this purpose. In addition, people who earn little should be told by the state that they are entitled to help – because people often don’t even know that. The money can be used, for example, so that children can go to a sports club or to a music school. Satchels, school supplies or even the school hostel could also be paid for with it.

What is child poverty?

In Germany, poverty does not mean that these children live alone on the streets or suffer from hunger, as is the case in the poorest countries in the world. Here it means that the money in the family is only enough for the bare essentials. For example, the family lives less healthily because fresh produce from the market is more expensive than packaged food from the discounter. Poor children can do less in their free time because they have no money. They also have fewer opportunities to get a good education. Most affected by poverty are children whose parents are unemployed. But children of single parents or from families with more than two children also have a high risk of poverty.