By Gunnar Schupelius
The planned basic child security is intended to get children out of poverty. In fact, however, poverty migration is being financed with it and that is bad planning, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Federal Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens) wants to spend an additional 12 billion euros a year to combat child poverty. To this end, she wants to introduce “basic child security” in which all social benefits for children are bundled.
At least 250 euros per month should be paid to the family for each child and if the parents earn little money, then correspondingly more according to a staggering. The highest rate would be 600 euros per child per month to families who receive the citizen’s benefit (formerly: “Hartz IV”).
These children are in the foreground when the minister promotes basic child security. Then she says that child poverty has “consolidated” in the socially weakest stratum, so that the very poor children cannot get out of their situation and therefore have to be brought out with the new basic security.
That sounds convincing, but it is obviously not true. According to research by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, the number of German children receiving basic income has fallen by 550,000 to one million since 2015. So these children have obviously escaped poverty. Since 2015, however, a total of 580,000 children have been added from asylum seekers from the Middle East (300,000) and from refugees from Ukraine (280,000).
Currently, almost 48 percent of children receiving basic income are foreign nationals; in 2015 it was only 19 percent. Incidentally, the number of foreign children receiving basic income whose parents are not asylum seekers or war refugees is even decreasing. So it is the immigration of poor people that is causing the number of children receiving citizen benefits to stagnate at a high level. Because more and more poor families are immigrating, especially from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of poor children remains high.
However, no basic security will help against this poverty immigration. This eliminates the argument that the amount must be increased in order to free the children of the poorest classes from their misery, because this already works without basic security.
The social benefits in Germany are already the highest in Europe. A few more figures: The standard rate of citizen income is 502 euros per month and adult (couples: 451 euros each, children: 318-420). A couple with three children receives 2905 euros per month including housing benefit. That’s enough to get a foothold and get a job or an education and feed the kids.
Basic child security is a well-intentioned idea. But one should remain honest and say clearly that it will primarily benefit poor immigrant families, of which there are more and more. The number of unauthorized entries rose by more than 50 percent in the first half of 2023. These are hidden costs of uncontrolled migration, which are covered by basic child security. This is being kept secret by the government.
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