ABSTRACT
This chapter examines various findings on poverty due to unemployment and in households that include unemployed people. It also examines the development of poverty in spite of gainful employment. The chapter presents the current socio-political debate on this topic and with a number of conclusions and recommendations for the prevention or elimination of labour market related poverty. The comparatively low rate of poverty among those not participating in the labour market in Germany is a decisive factor underlying this healthy socio-political image. The effects of poverty also decline rapidly in the higher private-income brackets. All studies on national income levels are in agreement that the poverty rate in Germany is traditionally lower than the average for the European Union as a whole. In the new federal states, the highest levels of poverty were to be found in households containing one single unemployed breadwinner.
