Rising power prices put higher burden on low-income households than on wealthy ones

The doubling of electricity prices in Germany from 2000 to 2016 had significant distributional effects, because low-income households spend a larger share of their income on energy than wealthy households, said industry-funded Rhineland-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research (RWI) in a research paper. “While the share of electricity costs of the income of wealthier households is around 1.5 percent, a three-person household at risk of poverty had to spend almost 5 percent of its income in 2016 to pay for electricity costs,” writes RWI in a press release.

Find the press release in German here and the paper in German here.

For background, read the CLEW article Welfare groups urge power cost relief for German poor and the factsheet What German households pay for power.