Almost half a million people living in Austria cannot afford a balanced diet on a regular basis. Conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer has a very special explanation for the widespread poverty, which also affects children: He blames the parents. In a video published in September from a wine bar in Hallein, he claims in front of party officials that everyone in Austria can afford one hot meal a day; after all, the cheapest meal is “a hamburger at McDonald’s.” To date, Nehammer has not apologized for this statement - on the contrary, he defends his stance on social networks.

The data says otherwise: according to Statistik Austria, 447,000 people in Austria last year did not have the financial means to eat meat, fish or corresponding vegetarian meals every other day, the Austrian Volkshilfe said in a statement. That is about five percent of the total population. Since 2021, the number of people affected by poverty in Austria has almost doubled, 78,000 of whom are children and young people alone, 18,000 less than six years old. In response to this, Volkshilfe Wien organizes a food distribution every Tuesday in the third district of the municipality; around 250 food packages are distributed to Viennese people affected by poverty.

In Austria, inflation is higher than in almost any other continental European country. As recently as August, the rate of inflation rose again, and this has an impact above all on everyday life: “Food prices in particular are rising and rising,” Volkshilfe wrote in one of its mailings. To draw attention to this problem, it organizes a food collection every year on “Poverty Day” on October 17." In one of the richest countries in the world, there should not be such poverty," says the federal director of Volkshilfe Austria, Erich Fenninger. As a result of inflation, the situation is increasingly tense and the number of needy people is rising in tandem with the decline in donations, Michael Häupl, the long-time Social Democratic mayor and now president of Volkshilfe Vienna, tells jW: "The problem is that many of our long-time donors come from classes at risk of poverty.Today, they have to take advantage of our offers themselves."Häupl added: “I know people who were sitting with me at [the winery] three years ago, and now they’re standing in line with us because they can’t afford food anymore.”

In addition to the 78,000 children whose parents can no longer afford many foods, there are 350,000 adolescents at risk of poverty in Austria. However, the effectiveness of organizations that want to fight poverty is limited - Häupl also knows this: “In my student days, I would have said that we are the doctor at the bedside of capitalism.”

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At this year’s Volkshilfe campaign in Vienna-Erdberg, 100 volunteers collected 5.7 tons of food - almost 2 tons more than the year before. Tanja Wehsely, managing director of Volkshilfe Wien, is pleased about this, but warns: “The wave of inflation has long since become a wave of poverty.” Without further political measures, there will be no long-term reduction in poverty. In the jW interview, she therefore calls for concrete measures, especially against rising housing costs: “Housing is the biggest price driver.Housing must no longer be an object of speculation by the market,” says Wehsely.Without a clear political signal, Volkshilfe cannot fight poverty, but only alleviate hardship.A committed doctor can cure the symptoms of an incurable disease, but cannot prevent its outbreak. For the latter, capitalism would have to be eliminated from the world.