>From today's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung at:
www.faz.com
Germans' Wealth Restricted to Small Group
By Nico Fickinger
BERLIN. Germans possess total assets of around DM8.2 trillion ($3.8 trillion). But the owners of this wealth make up only a small proportion of the country's population, a government report said on Wednesday.
The findings set off a cry of protest from politicians, unions, churches and social welfare organizations, some of which protested that the government was failing in its wealth-redistribution efforts.
The report, covering a period from 1973 to 1998, was submitted by Labor Minister Walter Riester and approved by the cabinet on Wednesday. It said the unemployed, the poorly skilled, couples with large families, single parents and immigrants were at the greatest risk of suffering poverty.
The report also contained some figures showing that, financially speaking, Germany remains a divided country. The western states are much richer than the five new eastern states. But, in another measure, the two areas show one major similarity: Wealth is limited to a small group in both areas.
The numbers look like this: In the western states, one-tenth of the households held 42 percent of the total wealth in the region. The lower 50 percent had 4.5 percent. The richest 10 percent had assets valued at about DM1.1 million on average, while the bottom half had about DM22,000.
A similar division exists in the east. Here, the richest 10 percent has 48 percent of the wealth, which averaged about DM422,000. The bottom half also had about 4.5 percent of the wealth, but each one of these households had only an average of DM8,000.
Walter Hirrlinger, president of the German Social Association, said the study was a "poor report card" for a well-to-do country and called on the governing coalition of Social Democrats and Alliance 90_The Greens to step up its efforts to bridge the gulf between rich and poor.
The trade union IG Metall urged the government to begin an offensive aimed at more justly distributing wealth in the country. And Dieter Schulte, chairman of the German Trade Union Association, demanded a "quick initiative to distribute wealth more widely."