Beschreibung

"If we take a look at the development of poverty in Germany over the last few decades, we have to notice several million people living in poverty since at least as early as the 1970s, irrespective of changes in economic situation, transformations in business structures, shifts in political paradigms, methods of fighting poverty or changes in the procedures for measuring poverty. Thus, although compensatory benefits have cushioned poverty successfully for the most part in Germany and other welfare states in the west, attempts to reduce poverty significantly have failed despite activation policies launched and implemented with promises of great success. If we share the European political goal of reducing poverty as extensively as possible - a component of the implicit sociopolitical consensus in Europe - , we have to admit that we are dealing with a fundamental and permanent crisis in the politics to fight poverty." (Author's abstract, © Springer) ((en))