> Raising children on 30k€ in a city in Western Europe is scratching on the government defined poverty line.

What do you base this on? Based on [0], the poverty threshold in Germany is €13.152/year, and Germany is one of the richer EU nations. Even if that’s a working single parent and one child, €30k isn’t scratching the poverty line.

[0] https://m.dw.com/en/germanys-minimum-wage-is-barely-above-th...

30k is gross and 13k is net income, those are very different things.

You also only looked at the poverty line for singles, not for couples (or single parent) with children. But you are in good company in this thread as nearly nobody takes children into account. Raising children on the poverty line is not the right way.

The poverty line is defined as 60% of median income, not by needs. In the UK there is also the phrase “living wage” which seems to be about needs rather than relative wealth, but I don’t know enough German to get past the opening paragraph of news (I have the German vocabulary of an 8-year-old, which is somehow all you seem to need for CEFR B1) so if an equivalent exists here, I don’t know it yet.

Fair point about gross/net:

€13.152 times two people = €26.304, and for reference €30k gross, category 2, one child = 21.018,18 € net, so about €5k short if that’s how family poverty is defined.

You cannot work with both parents fulltime when you have a toddler. Childcare is often only open 8 hours a day, so working 8 hours is not possible (remember mandatory breaks) and you also have to pay a lot for it. Also, single parents are increasingly common.

Poverty often means that you cannot afford a new washing machine when one breaks. Or not it being able to send your children to school trips.

As a German, I can tell you: 30k€ is not enough to raise a child here, even if both parents are working because at least one cannot work full-time.

I’m agreeing with you. And to an even greater degree if that’s €30k split between two adults and a child.

We need to stop taking government statistics as de facto goalposts.

Just because the German government says you can live on €13.152/year doesn't make it a fact.

Government numbers also says inflation is 2.6% last year but if I look closely, my bills and mandatory expenses have gone up way more than that.

That article states that Romanians are best off in the EU when it comes to living on minimum wage, while I can tell you that it's definitely not like that in the real world.

Lots of the time statistics are made with a formula tailored by the government to fit a certain political agenda.