Not so poor kids

Published on 6 May 2011 at 11:30

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“Kinder Surprise,” announces the Financial Times Deutschland headline, which plays on the German word for "children" and the well-known chocolate treat. The daily explains that youngsters in Germany are not as poor the OECD would have us believe. In its 2009 report, “Doing Better for Families”, the organisation claimed that between 2005 and 2008, 16.3 percent of German children were brought up by families earning less than half of the national average salary. Now the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) has announced that at the time this figure was only 10 percent, and currently stands at 8.3 percent. “We are on the right track with numbers like these,” remarks FTD, which nonetheless notes that “statistical errors can be expensive.” Published three weeks before general elections in 2009, the OECD figures had a significant impact on family policy. Ever since, German families have been granted an additional allowance of 20 euros per month and per child, at a cost of four billion euros per year to the state.

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