New figures from the Federal Employment Agency indicate a pronounced change in the composition of families receiving Bürgergeld (citizen’s benefit). As of June 2025, around 1.7 million people under 18 years old were supported through the system. Just over 875,000 were German citizens, while approximately 822,000 held foreign passports — placing the share of foreign minors at 48.4 percent.
This distribution varies strongly by region. In Bavaria, Saarland, and Baden-Württemberg, more than half of all minors receiving Bürgergeld are foreign nationals, with Bavaria reporting the highest proportion at 57.1 percent. In Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the share is lower, at around 39 percent and 38.3 percent, respectively.
When compared with population size, the contrast is even clearer. Citizen’s benefit was paid to an estimated 7.3 percent of German children, but to around 35 percent of foreign children nationwide — meaning that statistically, one in 14 German minors and slightly more than one in three foreign minors received support from job centers in mid-2025.
Reporting on the figures, NIUS outlined the steady shift over the past 15 years. In 2010, roughly four out of every five under-18 recipients were German. Today, the ratio of foreign minors is close to one-to-one.
In 2010, payments to foreign minors amounted to roughly €669 million. Last year, this figure was €3.6 billion. Payments for German beneficiaries have remained comparatively stable, fluctuating around the €2.5-€2.7 billion mark.
AfD social policy spokesman René Springer argues that the new data reflects structural strain on the welfare system and has called for tighter migration controls. In a written statement, he said that benefits for foreign children “have risen far faster than the system can sustain” and urged a change in policy direction, including stricter border management and enforcement of deportation orders.
Springer’s assessment is not too dissimilar to remarks made earlier this year by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who warned that the German welfare model may no longer be sustainable in its current form due to economic headwinds, rising subsidy needs, and demographic pressure. “The welfare state as we have it today is no longer financially viable with what we are achieving economically,” he said in August.
His remarks prompted a reaction from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who pointed to Hungary’s earlier shift toward a labour-priority economic model and claimed that Western welfare structures are reaching their limits.
“The Western welfare state is bankrupt, so it was right for us to switch to a labor-based economy in 2010,” Orbán said, contrasting Hungary’s “nation-building” approach with Germany’s belated “crisis management.”
Around 15 percent of Germany’s under-18s have a foreign passport, while an estimated 40 percent have some form of migration background. The Federal Employment Agency has previously reported that among working-age Bürgergeld recipients, roughly two-thirds are either immigrants or have immigrant parents.
Despite these discussions, the Bürgergeld program was still being presented as late as August by the Federal Employment Agency as available to young migrants who cannot meet basic living costs. Information sections aimed at newcomers, including English-language guidance for recent arrivals, remained publicly accessible online on the agency’s website.
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