THE NEW POVERTY AND LOCAL-GOVERNMENT SOCIAL POLICIES - A WEST-GERMAN PERSPECTIVE

This paper examines the role of local government with regard to regional inequalities in the new poverty resulting from mass unemployment. A first perspective concerns the framework for local politics in Germany, France and Britain. In France, a centralized and relatively egalitarian system of public social provision and a good standard of local spending tend to buffer the effects of regional and local unemployment. In Britain, a quite egalitarian system of public social provision tends to propagate throughout the country the negative effects of central state policies of severe cuts in social and local expenditure, contributing to a high and growing level of poverty. In Germany, high regional disparities in unemployment, a polarizing social security system, cuts in social spending and very unequal levels of local spending combine to the detriment of regions and cities in crisis -but a lower level of unemployment and a higher overall level of social spending still limit the amount of new poverty. A second perspective concerns the current policies of German local government. According to recent German urban research, the new poverty in West German crisis-ridden cities has been growing particularly quickly. The poor, tending to social dispersion and individual retreat, remain largely 'invisible'. Under conditions of financial austerity, most cities do not take advantage of the remaining possibilities for innovative social policies: they adopt incoherent and restrictive policies towards the new poor. In eastern Germany, the polarizing effects of the West German social security and local finance systems and the lack of experience of an models for innovative local social policies tend to worsen the deep crisis in the cities.