Press release No. 184 of 2 June 2016
WIESBADEN – For one out of seven clients of debt advice centres (13.5%), health problems such as diseases, addictions or consequences of accidents were the main cause of overindebtedness in 2015. This is a first provisional result of the 2015 overindebtedness statistics published by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) to coincide with the Debt Counselling Awareness Week from 6 to 10 June 2016.
Health problems particularly often cause overindebtedness of unemployed people (16.6% of the cases), while it is not possible to infer from the data what percentage of unemployed have lost their jobs as a consequence of illness. In contrast, the debts of persons in employment were mainly attributable to health problems in only 7.6% of the cases.