Munich-based ifo Institute for Economic Research specialists were unable to find the total amount of social benefits people received in Germany due to the high number of benefits.
Best known and part of a heated political debate is the citizen’s allowance, or Bürgergeld, the standard social welfare benefit for people who cannot cover their basic living costs. It is also available to migrants.
Other known State help are child benefits, housing benefits, parental allowance, disability benefits, financial aid for students, energy and heating subsidies.
But there are many, many more. Out of necessity, the ifo institute was ultimately forced to work with an incomplete inventory, saying there were more than 500 forms of social benefits on the federal level in Germany.
“Originally, we wanted to calculate the extent and impact of all the social benefits, but the countless regulations and services made it an almost impossible task. Instead of quantifying, we initially simply produced an inventory of all the social benefits at the federal level,” said Andreas Peichl, director of the ifo Centre for Macroeconomics and Surveys.
The German Social Code alone currently spans 3,246 paragraphs, covering both social benefits and the rules governing their implementation.
Beyond this, additional laws — such as the Upgrading Training Assistance Act, the Federal Training Assistance Act, the Federal Parental Allowance and Parental Leave Act, and the Family Caregiver Leave Act — introduce even more benefits and regulations.
“Our database on the social benefits is a first step toward more transparency in the welfare state. Producing evidence-based social policy requires policymakers in the next step to provide data on the use, costs and administrative effort of the benefits,” said ifo researcher Lilly Fischer.
Benefits could be in cash but could also be provided in services, benefits in kind or other assistance provided to achieve social justice and social security within the meaning of Sections 1 and 11 of the German Social Code I (SGB I), ifo reported.
Because the researchers could “not guarantee that the list is complete”, they urged experts and interested parties to submit potential additions or corrections in order to improve the quality and completeness of the database.
The difficulty of creating oversight indicates that Berlin itself also does not precisely know how much money it is spending and there are risks of double funding and bureaucratic overlaps.
“The database can help to better understand existing structures,” Fischer said, “but without reliable figures on usage and costs, it remains a snapshot.”
🇩🇪Deutschland hat über 500 verschiedene #Sozialleistungen – von BAföG bis Elternzeit. Ein neuer ifo-Beitrag zeigt: Der Sozialstaat ist komplexer als gedacht. Jetzt braucht es mehr Transparenz & Daten. 👉 https://t.co/VNYMcipZs2 #Sozialpolitik @APeichl pic.twitter.com/CjVFJaS5gG
— ifo Institut (@ifo_Institut) October 15, 2025
