Konsummuster und Konsumarmut von SGB-II-Leistungsempfängern : eine Untersuchung auf Basis der Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichprobe

Up until now, our knowledge on the consumption patterns of recipients of Unemployment Benefit II, the means tested basic security system for employable persons in Germany, is rather restricted. This comes somewhat as a surprise, since analyses of consumption are highly relevant for setting benefit levels. In order to close this gap, in our paper we will first concentrate on the amount and structure of benefit recipients' consumption spending. Afterwards we will analyze consumption poverty. We will compare the risk of several recipient subgroups to become poor in comparison to that observed for the general population. Doing so, we can show that recipients that are unable to draw on any financial resources besides benefit payments also face a particularly high risk of being consumption-poor. Detailed analyses show that their consumption of goods covering basic needs like food, housing, or clothes is much less restricted than their consumption of goods and services relevant for social or cultural participation. For reasons of comparison, we also focused on the reference population that is used for calculating benefit levels. Analyzing this group's composition, we found that about 80 percent of the households in this population either depend on payments by the state, or by social insurance, or rely on the liquidation of savings and private transfers as their main source of income. Moreover, all households in this population are income poor and about half of them are also in consumption poverty.