Benefit communities in East and West Germany

There was an average of around 2.2 million benefit communities in Western Germany and around 712,000 in Eastern Germany in 2023, according to the German Social Code (SGB) II. This means that the number of benefit communities has increased compared to the previous year, but is lower than it was ten years ago.

Number of benefit communities* in East and West Germany from 2013 to 2023

Characteristic	West Germany	East Germany
2013	2,236,642	1,100,552
2014	2,252,451	1,064,926
2015	2,272,423	1,015,797
2016	2,300,624	966,842
2017	2,343,583	918,652
2018	2,245,521	847,019
2019	2,127,354	779,115
2020	2,145,682	757,468
2021	2,104,508	725,247
2022	2,077,698	694,646
2023	2,193,592	711,602

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Release date

March 2024

More information

Region

Germany

Survey time period

2013 to 2023**

Supplementary notes

* The German term is "Bedarfsgemeinschaften", which is a legal term from German social law, particularly under the Second Book of the Social Code (SGB II), which pertains to basic income support for jobseekers. It refers to a household community where the members are economically dependent on one another and are considered together when determining eligibility and the number of social benefits.

Examples of this are:

Spouses who are not permanently separated
Registered same-sex life partners who are not permanently separated
People in a community of responsibility and commitment (“marriage-like community”).
The benefit community also includes children who live in the household and are younger than 25 years old. Requirement: They are unmarried, able to work and cannot support themselves from their own income. Children's income includes, for example, child benefit or maintenance payments.

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