60 percent of citizens' benefit for families now goes to foreigners

More than half of the citizens' benefit recipients who live in communities with minors do not have German citizenship. This emerges from a response from the federal government to a small question from the AfD parliamentary group. The “Bild” newspaper first reported on the numbers.

The law refers to people whose income and assets are taken into account together when calculating the benefit entitlement, such as parents living together and their children entitled to benefits living in the household, as a community of needs.

According to the federal government's response, in 2025, 59.4 percent of the citizen's benefit for communities with children flowed to households with at least one child in which the benefit recipient had a foreign passport. The proportion of households with exclusively German benefit recipients was 40.6 percent in 2025. The proportion of foreign communities with children was even higher at 60.5 percent in 2024. Recently their share has fallen.

However, the figures show that the ratio between German and foreign benefit recipients has completely reversed within 15 years: In June 2010, only German communities with children provided 70.6 percent of basic security benefits, while foreign ones only accounted for 29.4 percent.

A total of 20.54 billion euros in citizen money was paid out to communities with children under 18 years of age in 2025. Of this, 12.20 billion euros went to non-German recipients in such communities of need. German beneficiaries with children received 8.34 billion euros.

Particularly large amounts went to Ukrainian, Syrian and Afghan nationals. The statistics for 2025 show around 3.44 billion euros for Ukrainian beneficiaries in communities of need with underage children, around 2.20 billion euros for Syrians and around 1.06 billion euros for Afghans. In total, this was around 6.69 billion euros and therefore almost 55 percent of the payment claims of foreign beneficiaries in this group.

Almost half of all those entitled to benefits do not have a German passport

In total, there were around 5.3 million people entitled to standard benefits in Germany in 2025. Of these, around 2.5 million were foreigners, an automated share of 47.3 percent. 2.80 million or 52.7 percent were German. In the previous year, the German state spent 46.6 billion euros on the 5.3 million people entitled to benefits.

On July 1, 2026, citizen's money was replaced by basic security money.

When interpreting the numbers, the federal government points out a methodological peculiarity. In contrast to the question, the corresponding questions would not be answered at the level of the communities of need, but rather at the level of the person, since personal characteristics such as nationality cannot be evaluated in all combinations queried for communities of need.

The information is based on statistics from the Federal Employment Agency. The federal government's response was sent to the Bundestag by the Federal Ministry of Labor at the end of October.