For 30 years, a long-term study has been dealing with the fears of Germans - and comes to different results every year. In 2022, topics will come to the fore that have hardly caused any fears recently, but are now being fueled by the Ukraine war and price increases.
Against the background of rising energy, food and housing prices, Germans are particularly concerned about their own money this year. The fear of rising living costs is by far the number one concern in the annual survey "The Fears of the Germans". 67 percent of those surveyed expressed great fear that everything would become more and more expensive.
Overall, financial worries top this year's top five fears. From June 13 to August 23, 2400 representatively selected men and women aged 14 and over were surveyed. They were asked to rate given topics on a scale from one (not at all afraid) to seven (very afraid). The fear of increasingly powerful rulers worldwide, which was surveyed for the first time because of the Ukraine war, went straight up to seventh place in the ranking. Concerns about German involvement in the war, on the other hand, did not appear in the top ten, but rose sharply year-on-year.
The R V insurance published the figures. "For us this year, the big question was how Russia's unspeakable attack on Ukraine would affect people. You can see that very clearly in the fear of rising living costs," said study leader Grischa Brower-Rabinowitsch. In the previous year, fear of it took second place at 50 percent, behind concerns about higher taxes or reduced benefits due to Corona. The strong increase of 17 percentage points is remarkable, said Brower-Rabinowitsch.
"The anxious look in the purse makes the financial fears skyrocket." The Germans felt drastic price increases in almost every area of life. The second biggest concern (58 percent) is unaffordable housing. "The high and rising housing costs in many places is a major problem for a large part of the population. Anyone who is not in a financially comfortable situation will encounter an insurmountable barrier when looking for affordable housing," said the political scientist Manfred Schmidt from the Heidelberger Ruprechts-Karls University. He has been advising the R V Info Center on the evaluation of the anxiety study for 18 years.
The special feature of the representative study is its long-term factor: it is therefore regarded by scientists as a seismograph of the sensitivities surrounding politics, the economy, the environment, family and health. Many questions are repeated, others are asked anew depending on the development.
Overall, people seem more worried than they were a year ago. The anxiety index - the average of all worries surveyed - rose by six percentage points and reached 42 percent, its highest value in four years. For comparison: in 2016, after terrorist attacks and the refugee debate, it peaked at 52 percent.
While some fears increased significantly, others that had recently been at the top of the rankings slipped into mid-table. "The worry budget is limited for every citizen. This year economic fears have pushed forward, the fear of war has increased," said Schmidt.
By far the highest increase of 26 percentage points was in concern about a war with German participation (twelfth place). The authors reported that the last time there was a similarly large increase was in 1999 as a result of the Kosovo war. Brower-Rabinowitsch explained that when asked about the fear of authoritarian rulers, Russia's President Vladimir Putin was deliberately not named so that it could remain part of the study in the long term. "But I think people have understood very well what that means."
The concern in the study about "overburdening the state by refugees" (fourth place in 2021 with 45 percent) slipped a little way down to ninth place, but was still 45 percent. The fear that tensions will arise as a result of the influx of foreign people, on the other hand, only ranked 16th at 37 percent (in 2021 with 42 percent seventh place). This value fell the most compared to the previous year, at minus five percentage points. "The topic no longer has the dramatic escalation it had in 2016," said Schmidt.
"This year's absolute focus is on material fears. That has to do with the fact that people are confronted with the rising cost of living every day," he added. Added to this is the fear that the economy is going downhill, as economists and the media are largely predicting this in unison. The fear of a recession (57 percent), which was in tenth place last year, has now skyrocketed by 17 percentage points.
Concern about natural disasters and extreme weather events rose by eight percentage points (49 percent, sixth place), while fear of climate change moved up three places to eighth place with a plus of six percentage points (46 percent). "All in all, however, the green issues play second fiddle to material worries in all of the respondents - despite dry summers, fires and all the worries that climate change brings with it," said Schmidt.
