SOCIAL SECURITY, SOCIAL INEQUALITY 211
The lower spike in the poverty rate in comparison to other European
countries also indicates a rather moderate divergence of income levels.
At the same time, though, it still points to new fault lines within the struc-
ture of social inequality. Three trends clearly emerge when the develop-
ment of poverty is broken down according to diff erent life situations: fi rst,
the poverty rate among the elderly sank below the average of that for the
entire population after 1973. Second, the pension reforms considerably
reduced the risk of poverty for women. However, the number of younger
single mothers who fell below the poverty line began to increase in the
1970s. Consequently, a specifi c life situation became a poverty risk that
did not stem from the position within the workforce, but rather resulted
from processes of sociocultural transformation such as changed part-
nership forms. Third, beginning in the 1980s, long-term unemployment
became more signifi cant as a poverty-inducing factor, especially among
those just starting out in their careers and among low-skilled workers.^49
The attention devoted to poverty, however, increased far more than
the poverty rate itself. In the wake of the economic crises of the 1970s,
public interest in this topic grew, spurred on in particular by nongovern-
mental groups such as the Greens, social welfare organizations tied to the
churches, and even researchers. Discussions also erupted over the links
between processes of social structural change and new kinds of poverty
(such as the poverty of older people in need of care, or one-parent fam-
ilies), in addition to the self-image of West Germany as a work-oriented
society protected by a comprehensive welfare state. The debates over the
“new social question” and “new poverty” transferred the poverty issue
from the “third world” back to Germany. They interpreted poverty as a
problem that was fi rst and foremost caused by processes of economic and
social change that were beyond the individual level and therefore needed
to be addressed by the welfare state. In the GDR, on the other hand,
the poverty question was split discursively in that a strict distinction was
made between the deserving and undeserving poor. This and the partial
individualization of the causes of poverty also exhibited more parallels to
the discussion of poverty in Great Britain than it did to West German de-
bates. Since poverty-generating conditions had been offi cially overcome
in socialist society, social scientists and political actors expelled poverty
from the realm of normality in GDR society by blaming deviant social be-
haviors such as alcoholism and a lack of discipline with regards to work
for the poverty that still existed. The media also claimed that unemploy-
ment and poverty were structural problems inherent to capitalist societ-
ies in order to depict the GDR as the “better, more humane alternative to
the Federal Republic” in which employees could count on social security
and a safety net.^50