Status: 10/21/2022 10:31 am
Even before the energy crisis, a sufficiently heated home was not a matter of course for everyone. According to the Federal Statistical Office, 2.6 million people in Germany did not have enough money for this.
Even before the current energy price crisis, many people in Europe did not have enough money to heat their homes adequately. According to the Federal Statistical Office, this affected around 2.6 million people in Germany last year who, according to their own assessment, could not keep their house or apartment adequately warm for financial reasons.
Affected people living alone and single parents
That corresponded to 3.2 percent of the population. Those living alone (4.3 percent of the respective households) and single parents (4.7 percent) were particularly badly affected, as the office announced.
At 3.2 percent, Germany is still in the upper range. In the European Union (EU), around 6.9 percent of the population were unable to keep their homes adequately warm last year.
The results are also available at European level to the European statistical office Eurostat. According to this, in 2021 almost a quarter of Bulgarians (23.7 percent) were unable to heat their homes sufficiently. This also applies to 17.5 percent of people in Greece and 14.2 percent of Spaniards. In Finland, on the other hand, only 1.3 percent of people had to freeze at home.
Community statistics on income and living conditions have been collected in the EU since 2020. It is intended to provide information on the risk of poverty. In Germany, the questions about heating, holidays or wholesome meals are part of the representative microcensus.
Experts are calling for more relief from the state
The Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research (IMK), which is close to the trade unions, is calling for a state relief policy because of the above-average burden on poorer households as a result of the energy crisis. The measures taken by the federal government went “largely in the right direction”. The flat-rate energy fee of EUR 300 benefits households with lower incomes in particular, as it has to be taxed.
However, the percentage assumption of heating costs based on normal consumption by the state, as proposed with the gas price brake, has one disadvantage: households with high consumption and high heating bills would be more relieved when calculated in euros than those with low consumption. If the relief is granted without an upper limit, owners of large luxury properties will receive relief amounts that, in extreme cases, could be several times the average, according to the IMK experts.