For years, we read that the number of wealthy rises. That there are more millionaires in Germany. And while all around Germany around a fire flared up after another, the Germans were even told at the same time more and more often that pensions are not sure, speculating on the stock market is highly uncertain and real estate soon priceless was to learn who all his money into abroad manages to unnoticed amass even more from the Treasury.
If you then periodically reads the income of former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn in the newspaper (recently as about 16 million per year) but, around them more and more people see that looking in the garbage to returnable bottles, one wonders: is not there something? As yet inequality is growing in the country. Feels like it to be. Economic data say but something else.
Undoubtedly blew so around the year 2000, a cold, neoliberal wind through Germany. There was a time, in the years that followed reunification, as the oft-quoted scissors between rich and poor was greater. High long-term unemployment in the East and in some regions, for example, in North Rhine-Westphalia, precarious employment in East and West.
people who go to work, but it can not live, and “top up” the job center must. And strong on the other hand increasing salaries for those who already counted among the top earners anyway. Until roughly 2005, there were this trend. He has now stopped. And now there is a movement towards a harmonization of salaries and assets, as a study by the Institute of the German Economy in Cologne (IW) has revealed.
The experts of the IW do not deny that there is a wealth gap in Germany. Just have not increased the inequality of income and wealth in the past decade, as IW Director Michael Huether at the presentation of the report “Justice and distribution in Germany” said in Berlin.
The sprawling perception, the rich would get richer, while the poor would lose the connection must be rejected, as Huether. From 2009 to 2013, some the gross income of the bottom ten percent of full-time employees were increased by 6.6 percent. In contrast, the richest ten percent had increased their income during the same period by 2.8 percent.
the proportion of atypical employment also go since 2008 back, according to the study. At the same time the proportion of normal working conditions had increased by 40.3 percent in 2005 to 46.5 percent in the year, 2015. The proportion of fixed-term employees (excluding trainees) have located since 2005 on annual constant at around ten percent, he had been in decline since 2012 Design.
Unlike often assumed , also the wealth inequality in Germany has not grown, Huether said. A major reason for this is a good development in the labor market. However in asset inequality is greater than the income gap.
According to the Bundesbank, the fortune richest ten percent of households in Germany currently own 59.8 percent of the total assets. This represents an increase of 0.6 percentage points. With these five arguments, the IW refutes the myth of growing inequality:
measure of inequality: economists use a measure to determination of income differences. This measure is called Gini coefficient, based this can be measured, the market and net income distribution in the countries of the European Union.
the value of 0 means a complete uniform distribution. And the value of 1 maximal inequality. The IW experts have now determined that the “Gini coefficient of net income since 2005 in the amount of no statistically significant change” had more. Given the associated with globalization wage pressure that was remarkable. A similar result was previously come the ifo Institute
income differences. A full-time worker earns on the threshold of the highest income tenths in Germany 3.4 times as much as one on the threshold of the poorest tenth. Thus, the pay gap in this country is significantly greater than in Italy, Sweden and Norway, where this factor is less than 2.5. However, the United States come to a much higher value: where the top earners take at least a five times the lowest wage tenth. Germany is in terms of earnings so not strikingly egalitarian, but not elitist: His income spread moves in the midfield of the industrialized countries on a par with Austria and Australia
. pension factor: now critics could argue that only full-time employees are in this analysis considered and also other types of income such as capital gains and rental income is missing, but only justify this the real income differences. In fact, the gap appears to be greater when the total income goes into the comparison – but only if public pensions are left out. So you look at the pure market income before taxes and social security and without the public retirement income to, Germany, with a Gini coefficient of 0.50 on the scale of inequality only ranked 17 of 28 EU countries.
The simple explanation for the relatively large degree of inequality: With about 20 million retirees Germany has a large population that has hardly any market income. Countries with a higher proportion of private pension – but otherwise identical conditions – therefore cut in the distribution analysis of market revenues from supposedly better. Including the public pensions Germany has the distribution ranking of EU-28 already ranked 13th in the net invoice, ie after taxes and social security including state benefits, the Federal Republic even comes in tenth place.
shrinking middle class: After finding the IW it is true that the number of those who can be expected to the middle class disappears. In the long term seen. However, no shrinking process as in the United States exists – neither what nor as far as the pace extent. In the IW delimitation had the middle class in the narrower sense – with net incomes between 80 and 150 percent of the required weighted median income – in 2013 accounted for around 47 percent of the population.
At the peak in mid-90s there were still almost 55 percent. If the distribution of earners you look closely, it is found that it measured from 1991, actually is something more rich and slightly more arms in the country. By far the largest block of the so-called middle class, however, is largely stable. There is something more, which belong to the group of the lower and upper middle class, the middle in the narrow sense has shrunk somewhat.
states as in the United States: to hear again and again is the assumption that in Germany is increasingly a prosperity gap as in the would develop USA. There are no clues. Or more precisely: You have to look exactly which factors taken up in the bill. If you look at the pure market income of Germans and Americans, which is what the households is through wages available, then one sees in fact no major differences. Or if you like: In Germany there is a similar gradient as in the US.
In both countries, including 35 percent of the population to the group of lower incomes. Then comes the “lower middle” with seven percent in Germany and eight percent in the United States. Then the actual center with 27 percent in Germany and 23 percent in the US. Finally, the upper middle with 20 percent in Germany and 19 percent in America.
Rich there is therefore to eleven percent in Germany and 16 percent in the US. Come but state pensions are included, the picture changes fundamentally. As lower income then 27 percent are in Germany only 14 percent in the US but. Closer center makes then in Germany 49 per cent, in the United States 30 percent. And the rich take in Germany, including pension factor of four per cent, in America twelve percent.
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