"Despite a welcome decline in the nationwide poverty rate to 15.5 percent, worrying developments and new problem regions are emerging, particularly in west Germany," the report says. The poverty rate ranges from 11.7 percent in prosperous Bavaria to 22.7 percent in Bremen, the smallest state in Germany. Other states with a lower rate of poverty are Brandenburg, with 15.2 percent, as well as Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, which both have a 15.3 percent poverty rate. The prosperous South (Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg with a combined poverty rate of 11.8 percent) is contrasted by North Rhine-Westphalia with a poverty rate of 18.1 percent and the east, with a 17.5 percent rate. But in over a quarter of regions, poverty increased by more than 20 percent over the same period.

Source: The Local December 12, 2019 11:26 UTC