Wiesbaden and Poverty

I sat and read through the Saturday edition of the Wiesbaden newspaper, and a long piece over child poverty in the city.

So they gathered up the statistical data and laid out their story.

From 2016 data, 52-percent of the kids on the 'west-end' of Wiesbaden are in poverty.  If you ask most locals....this is the area of town that the migrants came into during the past thirty years and have occupied.

The Kastel part of the town, opposite of Mainz?  The kids in that part of town are around 32-percent in number, in terms of being in poverty. Roughly one out of three.

So at the end of list (the least likely in poverty), is Sonnenberg, Rambach, and my village....with only four-to-six percent of kids in some poverty class. 

I asked my German wife on this, and she kinda just looked at me and said.....we just don't have poverty in our village.  These are all working class people.  In my village, there might only twenty-five total migrants or low-income Germans in the whole town.

Naturally, this poverty thing, especially with kids in poverty, is a big deal.  Everyone is determined to find some political solution to resolve this.  But then you ask how, and the conversation tends to get quiet.

Just handing out more money.....apparently doesn't work. Then you go and try to do some educational things with adults to ensure they don't waste money, and that rarely works.

The statistical thing here?  Well....Wiesbaden is a city now of 285,000 and still growing.  The trend shows that it'll hit 300,000 by 2030.  Unless the poverty rate is resolved.....the numbers will just continue in the same direction.