As it has already been noted by others: those 3 examples are atypical for Germany. The authors could've asked the more typical poors about their backstory (the

As it has already been noted by others: those 3 examples are atypical for Germany. The authors could've asked the more typical poors about their backstory (the white trash, immigrants, street kids, drunks and junkies). I can only assume they wanted to portrait poors to which "middle class"-people could relate. Which at least for me touches interesting points: 1) I think that Germans do not relate to their typical poors - at least not as much they'd like to think they do. To me this is connected to the welfare system: It effectively does anything to prevent middle-class people from a hard landing while doing up to nothing for the poorest to being able to compete for better places on the social ladder. This makes sense from a political game theory standpoint: The vast majority of Germans aren't poor, at most they feel struggling. How can a democracy prevent its own sovereign (the majority of voters) from polluting the countries institutions for their own interests? 2) This "welfare focus" comes at the price of low social mobility: A welfare system aimed at the majority of people is generating huge costs, which the poorest also have to compensate for (ie harder to find employment, even harder to self-employ). 3) This "focus" is also reflected by the political debates about welfare reform: It's usually dominated by the concern for a soft landing rather than upward mobility. The massive welfare reforms of Chancellor Schröder in the late 1990 were thus mostly criticized by those groups fearing to become poor, rather than by people advocating for the poor or the poors themselves. In fact, for the majority of long-time jobless those reforms netted them more cash and a simpler way to get it. PS: 4) Being poor within a society is always bad, no matter how high the average standard of living is. It's kind of sad to see those 3 example's compassion-worthiness degraded just because they are "poor in Germany". (In fact: If I was young I'd rather be poor in a country with a lower standard of living if it hat a higher social mobility.)