Germany’s government has to close a gap of more than €20 billion in its 2027 budget. Who ends up paying has now been calculated by the Berlin think tank Dezernat Zukunft for the German Women’s Council: of the planned social cuts that can already be quantified, 60 per cent fall on women.
The study, “Consolidation at the expense of women”, was presented on Monday and puts the total at €8.4 billion. About €5 billion of that concerns benefits used mainly by women. It examined housing benefit (Wohngeld), childcare, the child supplement in basic income support, the maintenance advance for single parents (Unterhaltsvorschuss), long-term care and statutory health insurance. The institute’s director, Philippa Sigl-Glöckner, told Handelsblatt the authors had “only focused on cuts that are already concrete enough to be precisely quantified”, so the result is “even rather conservative”.
Where it gets concrete
Behind the percentage are measures families would feel. On Wohngeld, a short report by the Paritätische research unit in July found that a third of current recipient households would lose their entitlement altogether and the rest would get less. According to the Verfassungsblog, the draft bill expects about 163,000 households to slip into basic income support; around 70 per cent of households receiving Wohngeld are families with children. For the maintenance advance, a draft analysed by the Verfassungsblog would lower the age limit from adulthood to the completed 15th year of life. That would hit around 80,000 young people aged 16 and 17, in practice mostly children of single parents, who are overwhelmingly mothers. The DGB trade union confederation warned in September that effectively cutting parental allowance by two months and suspending the collective-wage requirement in elder care would hit women above all.
The skew toward women follows less from intent than from structure: women are the majority of single parents, do most unpaid care and more often work part-time or in lower-paid jobs. Saving on family benefits and care therefore means, almost by design, saving on them.
What gets decided this week
The timing is no coincidence. The Bundestag budget committee finalises the government draft at its session on Thursday, which the Bundestag says is expected to run into the early hours of Friday. The same day it is due to conclude work on the 2027 Budget Accompanying Act (printed paper 21/7860), which writes the consolidation measures into law. The Bundestag names the sitting week of 23 to 27 November for further deliberation.
How much of the plan survives is open. The maintenance-advance draft, for one, was last reported still in government coordination, and the federal states are asking for reliable cost forecasts. Our assessment: with little room for manoeuvre, individual cuts are likely to be softened but hardly all dropped, and the debate over who bears the burden will probably last until the vote. This is a forecast, and the study covers only measures already spelled out.
For Ukrainian families in Germany this is more than an abstract budget row. Many refugees are women raising children alone while working, and rely on a childcare place, rent support or maintenance advances. Whether any given change applies to them depends on residence status and the type of benefit; the final wording of the laws is still to come.
Sources: Handelsblatt, Deutscher Bundestag (hib), epd/evangelisch.de, Verfassungsblog, DGB
