Germany's official 60% and 200% lines, Land by Land
Germany draws both of its income lines from the same median. The Armutsgefährdungsschwelle, the at-risk-of-poverty threshold, is 60% of the median net equivalised income; the federal government's Poverty and Wealth Report counts a household as income-rich above 200%. For EU-SILC 2025, which measures income in 2024, the threshold for a single adult was 1.445 € net a month and 3.034 € for two adults with two children under 14. 16.1% of people lived below it, and 30.9% of people living alone.
The high-income line for a single adult works out at 57.782 € a year after tax and social contributions. A couple needs 1.5 times that on the modified OECD scale, 86.673 €, and two full-time earners each on the median gross salary of 54.066 € fall short of it once tax and contributions are paid. The report's EU-SILC series put 8.2% of people above the line in 2023.
The Länder publish their own thresholds, each measured against the Land's own median from the Mikrozensus. The Mikrozensus asks for current monthly income in bands, a different measure from the annual income EU-SILC records, so the two series are never mixed. A single adult in Hamburg crosses the 200% line at 4.514 € a month, and 9.8% of Hamburg's residents are above it, against 4.7% in Saxony-Anhalt. Choosing a Land on this page compares your household with that Land's lines.
The earnings lens is Destatis's Verdiensterhebung, which surveys 58,000 businesses. Its annual figures cover the whole of 2025, count full-time employees with at least seven months of work in the year and include Sonderzahlungen such as holiday and Christmas pay, so compare it with your annual gross including the 13th month. The 2025 median was 54.066 €, the top 10% started at 100.719 € and the top 1% at 219.110 €. By region, the median was 46.013 € in the eastern Länder excluding Berlin and 55.435 € in the west. Destatis publishes no full Land-by-Land distribution for the year, so the earnings rank stays national.
A €60,000 salary is above the full-time median of 54.066 € and well below the 100.719 € at which the top 10% begin. After income tax and social contributions a single person on that salary takes home well under the 57.782 € high-income line, and far above the poverty threshold of 1.445 € a month.