Financial satisfaction reveals growing gap between town and country

Financial satisfaction among Germans has reached a new record high: 43 percent are satisfied or even very satisfied with their financial situation. This is shown by this year’s Wealth Barometer, which the German Savings Banks Association (DSGV) presented in Berlin today. “This figure has more than doubled in the past 15 years,” said DSGV President Helmut Schleweis. “The stable macroeconomic situation of the past few years has certainly had an impact.”

However, the satisfaction of people living in urban areas is much higher than that of people living in rural areas. While 43 percent of city-dwellers stated that they were satisfied or very satisfied, this was only true for 31 percent of the rural sample. In addition, only one in five people living in the countryside expect their financial situation to improve – in cities, that figure is one in three. “We fear that this imbalance will solidify in the next few years,” said Schleweis. For the first time, the Wealth Barometer survey equally covered people living in cities, in suburbs, close to cities and in the countryside in order to identify divergences of opinion depending on where people live.

While the low interest rates are still the greatest cause for concern for most people when it comes to building their savings, many other factors are crucial to the financial satisfaction. Schleweis believes that not only society but also – and more importantly – policymakers need to take responsibility: “By creating decentralised structures and putting federalist principles into practice, they must help to minimise differences or prevent them altogether. And they need to facilitate and foster self-supporting structures.” Schleweis called for solid conditions to promote sustainable and fairly distributed growth: “This would also pave the way for a normalisation of monetary policy. And savers could at long last start saving with return again.”

The Wealth Barometer has been published since 2001. For this representative study which is conducted on behalf of DSGV this year approx. 5,800 people all across Germany were asked questions about their investments and accumulation of assets. Please go to www.dsgv.de/vermoegensbarometer to find the results of the study in German.