BERLIN, April 18 (Xinhua) -- A new study has shown that 2.54 million children were living in poverty in Germany in 2015, an increase of 166,000, or 0.7 percent, over the previous five years, and found that the increase is driven by the rise in immigration.
This meant that 19.7 percent of children -- six in a classroom of 30 -- were living in poverty in Germany in 2015, according to a study released by the German Institute of Economic and Social Research (WSI).
Compared to other countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the child poverty rate in Germany is below average, although a far cry from Finland and Denmark. Child poverty refers to children living in a household earning less than 60 percent of median household income.
This poverty threshold is widely used across the European Union (EU) and the OECD as a proxy measure to capture how the poorest members of society are doing in relation to others.
The WSI study analyzes the recent rise in child poverty. Their verdict: the increase in child poverty is driven by the rise in immigration.
According to provisional data from the German Statistics Office, immigration to Germany was higher than ever before in 2015. In the reference year, nearly 2.14 million people immigrated to Germany, 672,000 arrivals, or 46 percent, more than that of 2014.
The OECD states that in 2014, Germany was the second most popular country to immigrate to in the world. Among the 34 OECD countries, immigration to Germany has increased the most in recent years.
While the poverty rate of children born in Germany, remains stable, the poverty rate of immigrant children not born in Germany has increased markedly over the last five years. Two in five immigrant children born outside of Germany were affected by childhood poverty in 2009; in 2015, every other child with this immigrant profile (48.9 percent) was affected.
Poverty levels vary depending on countries of origin. Whereas 25.5 percent of children born in the former Soviet Union live in poverty, 47.3 percent of immigrant children born in Africa live in a household earning less than 60 percent of the median income.
