E A kilowatt hour of electricity: 51 instead of 35 cents. The insurance for the house: 1460 instead of 1130 euros per year. 500 grams of pasta: 1.19 euros instead of 39 cents. A pack of toast: 1.29 euros instead of 89 cents. If you ask the secretary Anja Piel and the pensioner Beate Behrens how much everything has become more expensive, they don’t have to think twice. You have the prices in your head: in the supermarket or on the way to work, sometimes, after a particularly difficult day, even in bed at night.
On average, inflation in 2022 was eight percent. However, it was significantly higher for energy and food. So exactly where it hurts those with very little money. What does that mean for those whose money, even before the Ukraine war, barely lasted until the end of the month? And do you get the promised relief?
Almost 14 million people in Germany are considered at risk of poverty, 600,000 more than before the corona pandemic. They earn less than 60 percent of median household income. Because they could theoretically be very wealthy, they are called “at risk of poverty” and not “poor”. These people spend relatively more on necessities like groceries and less on pleasurable but non-essential things like travel and dining out.
No reason to be ashamed: pensioner Beate Behrens at the table
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Image: Anna mother
Anja Piel works full-time as a public servant. Her husband is a paramedic who works in shifts, 40 percent; He can’t manage any more because he has high blood pressure and someone has to look after their six children between the ages of one and a half and 15. Together they earn around 3000 euros net, with housing benefit and child allowance it is around 4000. When the light, heating, loan and insurance for the house have been paid for, around 1000 euros remain. That’s not even 4.20 euros a day per family member. Anja Piel works 40.2 hours a week. She says she knows she doesn’t have to be ashamed that her salary alone isn’t enough to live on. Because many of her neighbors in the Bavarian village do not know that she is receiving state aid, she nevertheless asked for her name to be changed in the text.
Beate Behrens is 68 years old and suffers from multiple sclerosis. She has worked as a sales assistant for 32 years. Then she got sick and received unemployment benefits, that was ten years ago. For three years she has been getting a pension of 810 euros, which is increased by 250 euros with the basic security in old age. Behrens, a portly woman with a deep voice, rarely has more than one lamp on and heats her apartment in a small town north of Hamburg to just 19 degrees. “I can’t save any more,” she says.
You have to be able to afford to save energy
Low-income people often live in poorly insulated housing and have no means to remedy the situation. Petra Spöck from Caritas observed this. For many years, Caritas and other sponsors have been offering a free electricity savings check for households in various cities that receive unemployment or housing benefits, for example. Demand has increased noticeably since the Ukraine war. Spöck observes that the poor have even less than before because of the increased cost of living. “They go from bad to worse,” she says, “trying to somehow keep their heads above water. A lot of what was previously possible is now falling behind.”