Thread: Germany's Children Poor

Just posting because i'm amazed at how much better German charities are then ours apparently.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8152346.stm

If you want to know what child poverty looks like in Germany, do not go onto the streets; go into homes, into living rooms and talk to people like the Thiel family.

Twelve-year-old Jasmin Thiel and her twin brother Florian do not look poor.

They have a DVD player and a colour TV. Jasmin is clutching a mobile phone.

But they are among the millions in Germany caught in a growing pool of poverty.

Much of what this Berlin family owns, from their furniture to their clothes, has been handed out by local charities.

The mother Andrea has no partner, no job, and receives a welfare cheque which barely covers the bills.

"Once I've paid for rent and for electricity," Ms Thiel explains, "I only have about 200 euros [£172] left a month."

"I've got to buy all our food with that, plus all the things the kids need for school. We usually run out of money before the month's over."

Single mothers

Jasmin and Florian go to a local soup kitchen for their lunch.

It is in a children's centre called Die Arche (The Arc), which keeps poor children fed and off the streets.

One girl, nine-year-old Anne-Marie, is rummaging in a basket of second-hand clothes.

"The shoes I'm wearing now I found here," she tells me. "I got some trousers here, too, and a pullover."

Anne-Marie is part of an astonishing statistic; in Berlin 36% of children are considered poor.

"Most of the children in Berlin live in families like you can find here in Die Arche," says the centre's spokesman, Wolfgang Boescher.

"The typical family is a mother without a husband. She has two or three children from different men, and she has no job, she is not able to work," he adds.

Somewhat related - Germany has one of the smallest percentages of young people over any other country in the world. Basically, the old people are living longer and the middle-aged are having way-fewer kids. Plus, I understand there are large government incentives to have children. Maybe these charities are a reflection of these incentives.