The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) defines “middle class” as people who have at their disposal between 70 percent and 150 percent of the average after-tax income. For a single person, that means between €1070 and €2350 per month. despite falling unemployment, the proportion of individuals and families living on roughly average incomes has dropped, weekly Die Zeit reported.
Germany’s "middle class" has been steadily shrinking since the late 1990s. The share of middle income earners as a proportion of the population fell from 59.2 percent to 58.7 percent over the course of 2008 – the last year for which reliable figures are available. Ten years earlier, the figure had stood at 64 percent.
Figures released Tuesday by the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis) revealed that the proportion of Germans at risk of poverty had risen from 12 percent in 2004 to 15.5 percent in 2008. The EU defines a person as being at risk of poverty if they are forced to live on less than 60 percent of the average income, including state transfers such as welfare payments. In Germany, this amounted in 2008 to €11,151 per year for a single person. Some 62 percent of unemployed people and 37.5 percent of singles are regarded as at risk of poverty, along with 14.9 percent of pensioners.
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