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# What Happened to the Incentive to Earn? Hidden Bracket Creep in Germany’s Child-Support Schedule
- URL: https://hito-kane-mono.com/what-happened-to-the-incentive-to-earn/
- Published: 2026-10-20T20:05:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-20T20:19:29.000Z
- Description: For a parent of two teenagers, more than €1,000 of monthly adjusted net income can now fall inside a range where earning more does not increase the parent’s own disposable income.
- Author: Dieter Joenssen
- Tags: Institutions & Society, Child Support, Economic Incentives, Düsseldorf Table, #kane

### Part 1 — The first income band, 1979–2026

Dieter Joenssen · 20 Oct 2026

## Key findings (Part 1)

**F1.** Full payment capacity starts at Y\* = B + Z. Below that point, every additional euro of adjusted net income goes to child support; the paying parent’s own income stays at B.

**F2.** The first-band control amount has tracked the at-risk-of-poverty threshold for a single person for more than three decades. In 2025: €1,450 versus €1,446.

**F3.** For one child aged 12–17, the corridor between full payment capacity and the first-band ceiling is €126.50 in 2026\. At its low points (2001, 2016–17, 2023) it was about €70.

**F4.** For two children, all six age combinations were negative in the second half of 2001, from 2015 to 2017, and again since 2023\. For two teenagers, each low point has been deeper than the last.

**F5.** For two children aged 12–17, the parent keeps none of any additional income between €1,450 and at least €2,497 of adjusted net income per month: a range of at least €1,047.

**F6.** Negative breaks follow the floors: legislation in 2001, a self-retention increase calculated on the new Bürgergeld rate in 2023\. Positive breaks come from raising the band ceiling by hand (2008, 2018, 2024). No one is responsible for the corridor in between.

*Figures in August 2026 prices. 2026 table, employed parent, B = €1,450\. F5 is a lower bound.*

## 1\. The puzzle: when does an extra euro actually stay with the parent?

The basic principle of child support is hardly controversial: parents remain financially responsible for their children after separation. A more interesting question begins one step later.

**What happens to the incentive to earn when an additional euro of income does not increase the disposable income of the person who earns it?**

Germany’s child-support system creates precisely such situations.

Consider a non-resident parent whose income is too low to make the full scheduled payment without falling below the amount the system intends to leave for the parent’s own needs. Let B denote that protected amount and Z the scheduled payment for the child. Full payment capacity is reached only once income reaches

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-d1953553-c5dc-4382-a514-652d32d56532.png)

Below that point, additional income does not translate into additional disposable income for the parent. In the simplest representation, payment capacity is

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-0076639a-26e2-4ffa-bd84-1714b4d49394.png)

until the full payment Z is reached. An additional euro of adjusted net income therefore produces an additional euro of payment capacity:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-b8cd2ab7-f595-43a2-8069-d8176f5be721.png)

The parent earns one euro more and pays one euro more. His or her own disposable income remains unchanged, so the private return on the additional euro is zero. Independent of any moral claims, this is a poor personal incentive.

Public discussions of child support usually focus on average burdens: how many euros a parent must pay, what share of income that represents, or whether the amount is sufficient for the child. Those are important questions, but they miss the margin at which economic behaviour is decided.

People do not decide whether to work one more hour based on their average tax rate. They react to what happens to the next euro. Will an overtime shift increase disposable income? Will a promotion improve the household budget? Is a more demanding job worth taking? Does additional training eventually translate into a higher standard of living? If the answer over a relevant income interval is effectively “no”, the system cannot be surprised when people look for another margin on which to adjust.

That adjustment need not take the crude form of leaving employment. It can mean refusing overtime, not pursuing promotion, choosing a less demanding job, reducing formal hours or not increasing them from part-time, shifting toward self-employment, or placing less value on career progression. At the less desirable end, it can make undeclared work more attractive. None of these responses requires hostility toward the child. They follow from a simpler mechanism: formal additional earnings cease to improve the earner’s own economic position.

The incentives become even more peculiar once public transfers enter the picture. Where the state advances child support because the non-resident parent cannot pay enough, additional formal earnings may first replace public expenditure rather than increase the resources available to the child. In that range the parent works more and the state pays less, yet neither the parent nor the child necessarily has more.

From a fiscal perspective, this may look efficient. From the perspective of labour supply, it creates a wedge between the social value of additional work and its private return to the person doing it. That is where the Düsseldorf Table becomes more than a schedule of child-support amounts.

Once payment obligations, income bands and the amount meant to remain with the parent are combined, the system generates an implicit marginal incentive structure: income ranges in which additional earnings are privately valuable, ranges in which they are absorbed by increased payment capacity, and thresholds at which incentives change abruptly.

The important question is therefore not simply how much child support a parent pays. That can be read straight off the Düsseldorf Table, now published every year. The question is:

**At what income does the parent begin to keep the next euro, and how has that point changed over time?**

## 2\. The Düsseldorf Table: a guideline that behaves like an institution

For a document that repeatedly insists that it has “no force of law,” the Düsseldorf Table does a remarkable amount of governing.

Judges at the Düsseldorf Regional Court developed the first version in 1962 for their own use. Since 1979 the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf has issued it, and today every update is coordinated with all German Higher Regional Courts and the maintenance commission of the [Deutscher Familiengerichtstag: maintenance commission](http://www.dfgt.de/index.php?tid=66&ref=hito-kane-mono.com).

Formally, it is not law, and it says so in its first note: “The table has no force of law; it constitutes a guideline.” The Federal Ministry of Justice calls it non-binding but generally accepted ([Federal Ministry of Justice: child support explained](http://www.bmjv.de/DE/themen/gesellschaft%5Ffamilie/kinder/kindesunterhalt/kindesunterhalt.html?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)). The Federal Court of Justice describes it as neither a source of law nor customary law, but an aid for determining appropriate maintenance under the Civil Code ([BGH, XII ZB 177/22 (2023) Rn. 33](https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/DE/Zivilsenate/XII%5FZS/2022/XII%5FZB%5F177-22.pdf?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)).

That description is accurate, and incomplete. The legal obligation comes from the Civil Code, but the table supplies the machinery that turns it into euros: income bands, age groups, percentage levels, control amounts, self-retention amounts and the child-benefit credit. No family court derives child support from first principles. Judges, lawyers, youth-welfare offices and separating parents all calculate from the same schedule, so it becomes the reference point any alternative has to be argued against. The table states this purpose itself: its rates typify children’s needs by parental living standard and age, to promote equal treatment of comparable cases.

Deviation is legally possible. The Federal Court of Justice has long held that results must be checked against the individual case, and the table provides the means: moving to a higher or lower income group, control amounts and, where income is insufficient, deficiency calculations.

So I treat the table here not as statute, but as what it is in practice: the standardized decision framework that translates a parent’s income into a maintenance obligation.

The table also covers spousal maintenance, deficiency cases, maintenance between relatives and claims connected with caring for a non-marital child. This article focuses on its most familiar application: cash child support paid by the parent with whom the child does not primarily live. Here the table converts adjusted net income into discrete bands, assigns each band a need by the child’s age, and interacts with child benefit, self-retention and control amounts to determine what is actually payable.

It therefore answers two questions, not one. How much does a child need? And:

**How much of an additional euro of parental income is available to satisfy that need?**

The second question is where the incentive problem begins.

## 3\. How the machine works: income bands, child need, child benefit and the control amount

At first glance, the Düsseldorf Table looks almost trivial. Find the parent’s income in the left-hand column, find the child’s age across the top, and read off a number.

That simplicity is deceptive. The number in the table is not necessarily the amount that changes hands, and the income band does more than classify a parent by earnings. Several components interact: the parent’s adjusted net income (*bereinigtes Nettoeinkommen*), the age-dependent need assigned to the child, child benefit, the amount actually payable, and the amount the system expects to remain available to the parent.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-1c2ea7aa-9b0c-438d-ba95-f17002ed3c29.png)

Table 1: Düsseldorf Table 2026, first three income bands

In 2026, the first income band covers adjusted net income of up to €2,100 per month. For a child aged 12–17, the table assigns a monthly need of €653 in that band; for younger children, €486 (ages 0–5) and €558 (ages 6–11). But €653 is not what the non-resident parent normally transfers.

### **From “need” to the actual payment**

Germany currently pays €259 per month in child benefit (*Kindergeld*) for each child. For a minor child, half of that amount is credited against the scheduled need. For a 12–17-year-old in the first band:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-8a46b8aa-0abb-4aa1-89b2-ba841111f554.png)

The table amount (*Tabellenbetrag*) is €653\. The payment amount (*Zahlbetrag*) is €523.50.

That distinction is fundamental for everything that follows. The table amount describes the child’s assigned need before the child-benefit credit. The credit itself does not depend on that need: for a minor it is half the child benefit, whatever the income band. The payment amount is the cash obligation that remains for the parent.

The table publishes the resulting payment amounts in an appendix. For 2026, the first band gives €356.50 for ages 0–5, €428.50 for ages 6–11 and €523.50 for ages 12–17\. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-0017b7b8-9f75-4f7e-ba7e-44a41c1b8fef.png)

Table 2: payment amounts 2026, first three income bands

This rule has not always applied. From January 2001 to December 2007, § 1612b Abs. 5 BGB (old version) suspended the credit insofar as the paying parent could not pay 135% of the reference amount (*Regelbetrag*; [BGH, judgment of 9 Nov 2005, XII ZR 31/03](https://www.bundesgerichtshof.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/DE/Zivilsenate/XII%5FZS/2003/XII%5FZR%5F%5F31-03.pdf?%5F%5Fblob=publicationFile&v=1&ref=hito-kane-mono.com)). For a parent in the first band, that meant paying almost the full table amount. The historical series in this article follows that rule for those years. The 2008 reform then raised the table amounts and restored the half credit, which left actual first-band payments almost unchanged.

There is one further qualification. The table is built around a standard case of two maintenance beneficiaries; with more or fewer, classification into a lower or higher band may be appropriate. For the examples below, the income band is held fixed to isolate the mechanics.

### **The lower boundary: self-retention and the control amount**

German maintenance law does not assume that every euro earned by the parent is available for transfer. The table specifies a necessary self-retention amount (*notwendiger Eigenbedarf*, commonly *Selbstbehalt*). In 2026, for an employed parent facing claims from a minor child, it is €1,450 per month; for a non-employed parent, €1,200.

The table also contains a *Bedarfskontrollbetrag*, literally a “needs control amount”. The two concepts should not be conflated. The table states explicitly, in note A.III, that the control amount is not identical to self-retention. Its function is to check whether the resulting distribution of income between the paying parent and the children remains balanced. If the control amount is undercut once all maintenance obligations are taken into account, note A.III allows the court to apply the table amount of the next lower group whose control amount is still met. The wording is permissive (“kann”), not mandatory. For the first band, this escape route does not exist: there is no lower group to move to. That is one reason this article starts with the first band ([Düsseldorf Table 2026, note A.III](https://www.olg-duesseldorf.nrw.de/infos/Duesseldorfer%5FTabelle/Tabelle-2026/DT%5F2026.pdf?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)).

In the first band, the control amounts coincide with the self-retention amounts: €1,200 for a non-employed and €1,450 for an employed parent. At higher bands, the control amount rises above the self-retention floor. The self-retention amount answers the question of how much must at least remain with the parent. The control amount asks something different:

**Is the distribution produced by this income band still consistent with the table’s own notion of balance?**

For the first band, the focus of this article, the two concepts meet.

### **A complete example**

Take an employed parent in the first band and a child aged 12–17\. The scheduled need is €653; after half the €259 child benefit is credited, the payment is €523.50\. If the parent is to retain €1,450, full payment capacity requires

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-a9cf2d17-cb2a-49fe-a797-a8cd982582a4.png)

A parent earning exactly €1,973.50 can pay the full €523.50 and keep €1,450\. A parent earning €1,700 cannot: 1,700 − 523.50 leaves €1,176.50, below the floor. The system has reached a capacity constraint, and this is where an apparently simple lookup table begins to create an economic structure.

### **The historical picture: nominal and real**

Over time, nominal amounts tell an intuitive but incomplete story. Child-support amounts rise, income-band boundaries rise, control amounts rise, child benefit rises, as one would expect after decades of inflation.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/image.png)

Figure 1: nominal historical series

The picture changes once the same series are expressed in constant purchasing power. All real values in this article are deflated with the Destatis consumer price index and expressed in August 2026 euros.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/image-1.png)

Figure 2: inflation-adjusted historical series, August 2026 prices

The long-run development is not proportional. The first band’s upper boundary stays fixed in nominal terms for years and then jumps when the table is revised: in real terms, a saw-tooth of administrative increases followed by erosion through inflation. The control amount follows a different trajectory, and payment amounts another. Child benefit shows long periods of nominal stability, interrupted by discrete increases.

The parameters are not only revised at different times; the rules behind them have changed too. Over the period, the table changed its child-benefit rule (2001 and 2008), its reference amount (from the *Regelbetrag* to the statutory minimum support in 2008), its currency (2002), its standard case and its coordination process, without a published methodology for any of it.

The economic burden of child support therefore depends on the relationship between at least three quantities: the income-band boundary, the amount payable and the amount left to the parent. If all three rose proportionally, the structure would stay the same as nominal amounts grew. They do not. Once they drift relative to one another, the more interesting question is no longer how much child support has increased, but:

**How much income is left between the amount the parent is expected to retain and the boundary at which the support schedule changes?**

That is where the historical table reveals something almost invisible in its annual headline amounts: the gradual compression of the income range in which additional earnings improve the paying parent’s own position.

## 4\. The floor: the control amount and the poverty threshold

So far, the *Bedarfskontrollbetrag* has appeared as an internal parameter of the table. But what does it represent in economic terms?

The table does not define it as a poverty line. It is an instrument of maintenance law, meant to check whether the distribution of income produced by an income band remains appropriate. In the first band, for an employed parent, it coincides with the necessary self-retention amount: €1,450 per month.

Another threshold was constructed for an entirely different purpose. Eurostat and the Federal Statistical Office define a person as at risk of poverty when their equivalized disposable income after social transfers falls below 60 percent of the national median. This is a relative-income measure: it asks whether a household has substantially fewer resources than the middle of the distribution.

The two concepts come from different institutions, use different methods and answer different questions. Empirically, they meet in almost the same place. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/image-2.png)

Figure 3: Düsseldorf Table parameters, poverty thresholds and median earnings, August 2026 prices

Across the period for which comparable poverty-threshold data are available, the inflation-adjusted control amount tracks the German at-risk-of-poverty threshold remarkably closely. At the current end of the series, the coincidence is almost literal. The 2026 table sets the relevant amount for an employed parent in the first band at €1,450 per month. The most recent EU-SILC result (2025, based on 2024 incomes) puts the threshold for a person living alone at €1,446\. A four-euro difference is not evidence that one institution copied the other, and it does not need to be. Two independently constructed benchmarks have repeatedly occupied the same economic territory. **The child-support system’s control floor has, empirically, tracked a threshold that society independently uses to identify poverty risk.**

### **What exactly is the poverty threshold?**

The comparison needs some care, because the two income concepts differ. The EU-SILC threshold is not based on an individual wage but on household disposable income after taxes, social contributions and transfers, adjusted for household composition. It is set at

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-f4ea7b4a-893a-41f7-93aa-bc20d40d8fd0.png)

where M is the national median equivalized disposable income. For a person living alone, equivalized income is simply that person’s disposable income. For larger households it is not, because two people living together do not need twice the income of one to reach the same standard of living. The control amount, by contrast, belongs to an individual maintenance calculation and is not derived from median income. Their proximity is therefore not an accounting identity. It is an empirical finding.

### **A useful ratio**

Dividing the two series makes the relationship clearer: 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-4cc31760-ce9a-4a79-8c94-fa2ea96e5cd8.png)

A value of 1 means the control amount equals the poverty threshold; above 1, it lies above it; below 1, below.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/image-3.png)

Figure 4: control amount relative to the poverty threshold (R)

Over long stretches, R stays close to one for both the WSI and the EU-SILC threshold. Given publication delays, data availability and earlier irregular adjustment cycles, that is remarkable. The amount left to the paying parent has broadly moved with a socially observable measure of minimum relative living standards, and the table tracks it reasonably well.

This gives the incentive analysis a concrete interpretation. If the control amount approximately equals the poverty threshold, the income at which full payment capacity is first reached can be read as

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-0155e448-57a5-4136-b478-a60194c4a67b.png)

In plain English:

**Full child-support capacity is reached at roughly the point at which paying the full amount leaves the parent at the poverty-risk threshold.**

That is a different statement from saying a parent pays 20 or 25 percent of income. It tells us where the system lets that burden bottom out.

### **Median earnings tell a different story**

Figure 3 also includes a second benchmark: inflation-adjusted median gross monthly earnings. This is not a poverty threshold. It measures labour-market pay before tax and social contributions, while EU-SILC measures disposable household resources. Precisely because of that, the ratio of the control amount to median gross earnings is informative: it shows whether the table’s floor keeps its position relative to what work pays, even though one is a net and the other a gross figure. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/image-4.png)

Figure 5: control amount relative to the first-band ceiling and to median gross earnings

In the data used here, the control amount is commonly around one third of median gross monthly earnings, and that relationship is remarkably stable. The first band’s ceiling behaves differently. It stays fixed for periods, loses ground and is then raised in steps. The lower boundary follows something like minimum socially acceptable resources; the upper boundary of the first band follows an episodic process. Between them sits the child-support obligation.

### **The first hint of a squeeze**

Figure 5 already shows it. The control amount has risen from about 0.46 of the first-band ceiling in 1979 to 0.69 today (€1,450 / €2,100). An ever larger part of the first band is taken up by the floor alone.

This gives the first band a simple geometry. At the bottom is an amount that empirically lies close to the poverty threshold, B ≈ A. At the top is the maximum income still classified in the 100-percent band, Emax. The space between them,

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-b63eb82b-679d-4643-a720-278118a6d82c.png)

is the whole income corridor above the control amount in the first band, and child support has to fit inside it. For one child, the payment Z takes part of it; for two, two payments compete for the same space. As payments and the floor rise relative to a ceiling adjusted only intermittently, the remaining corridor narrows.

The economically interesting question is therefore specific: **how much must a parent earn before the full obligation can be paid without falling below the control floor, and how much income remains before the next boundary?**

## 5\. The squeeze: one child, then two

The previous sections established two boundaries. Above the first band’s ceiling, a parent moves into the next income group. And a parent counts as fully able to pay only once income covers both the payment and the amount meant to remain with them.

For a child in age group a in year t, full payment capacity starts at

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-d02e31d0-2659-439d-9ec2-bd211c6286e3.png)

where B is the control amount and Z the payment amount after the child-benefit credit. Below L, the parent cannot pay the full amount and keep B. Above it, additional income finally raises the parent’s own disposable income again. What remains of the first band after that point is

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-f5d47c33-ffe6-4ea7-bf86-5787f00ca7b5.png)

Δ is the income corridor in which earning more improves the paying parent’s position before the next band begins.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/image-5.png)

Figure 6: one child, remaining corridor within the first band, August 2026 prices

In 1979 the corridor was between about €730 and €840 in today’s prices, depending on the child’s age. Since then it has contracted in a saw-tooth: each revision of the table reopens it, and inflation and rising floors close it again. The youngest age group keeps the widest corridor; the 12–17 group, with the highest payment, the narrowest. For an older child, its low points came in 2001, 2016–17 and 2023, at about €70 each.

### **When €126.50 is the entire reward corridor**

For an employed parent with one child aged 12–17, the 2026 corridor runs from €1,973.50 to €2,100: €126.50\. This does not cap what the parent may earn, and income above €2,100 is not simply confiscated. The second band applies, subject to the downgrade option described in Section 3\. It means that once full payment capacity is reached, only €126.50 of adjusted net income remains in which a raise clearly improves the parent’s own position. Promotions and regular overtime rarely move income by less than that.

### **Why the corridor shrinks**

The corridor shrinks whenever the control amount and the payment together grow faster than the band ceiling. That is the pattern in the data: the ceiling is adjusted intermittently, while the control amount and payment amounts keep rising. Higher child support alone would not produce a squeeze if bands and retained-income thresholds moved in proportion. The squeeze comes from their relative movement.

2018 shows the mechanism most clearly. Widening the first band immediately reopened a large corridor. Nothing about the economics of raising a child changed that year; the boundary was moved. In the following years, the corridor began closing again. Income bands are not passive labels: they decide how wide the region is in which earning more pays.

With one child, a corridor still exists. With two, it does not.

### **Two children**

For two children in age groups a and b, the same logic gives

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-01cb3522-4757-4357-a938-f97262d5cfdd.png)

If Δ is positive, there is a part of the first band in which the parent can pay both children in full, keep the control amount and still gain from earning more. If it is negative, there is no such point inside the first band at all.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/image-6.png)

Figure 7: two children, remaining corridor within the first band, August 2026 prices

In 1979 all six age combinations were clearly positive, between about €440 and €650 in today’s prices. Combinations with older children deteriorated first, because their payments are larger. Then a pattern sets in. All six combinations were negative in the second half of 2001, from 2015 to 2017, and again since 2023\. Revisions of the table reopened the corridor in between, most visibly in 2008 and 2018, but each closure went deeper than the one before. For two teenagers, the low points were about −€365 in 2001, −€405 in 2017 and −€435 in 2023.

A negative Δ is a capacity deficit at the top of the band. In 2026, a parent of two teenagers at the first band’s ceiling of €2,100 is still €397 short of paying both in full while keeping the control amount. The control floor and two payments have outgrown the band.

### **The zone in which earning more yields nothing**

Δ measures what is left at the top of the band. The same equations describe the zone below full capacity. Between B and B + ΣZ, every additional euro of adjusted net income goes to child support, and the parent’s own income stays at B. The width of that zone is simply the sum of the payment amounts (2026, employed parent, B = €1,450):

| **Children**    | **Payment amounts (€)** | **Zone, adjusted net income (€/month)** | **Width (€)**  |
| --------------- | ----------------------- | --------------------------------------- | -------------- |
| One, 0–5        | 356.50                  | 1,450 – 1,806.50                        | 356.50         |
| One, 6–11       | 428.50                  | 1,450 – 1,878.50                        | 428.50         |
| One, 12–17      | 523.50                  | 1,450 – 1,973.50                        | 523.50         |
| Two, both 0–5   | 2 × 356.50              | 1,450 – at least 2,163                  | at least 713   |
| Two, both 12–17 | 2 × 523.50              | 1,450 – at least 2,497                  | at least 1,047 |

 For two teenagers, that is more than €1,000 of monthly adjusted net income across which a pay rise, a promotion or regular overtime leaves the earner exactly where they were. For one child, the zone lies entirely inside the first band. For two, it extends beyond €2,100, so these figures are lower bounds: they assume the first-band amounts continue to apply.

### **From average burden to marginal incentives**

Child support as a share of income describes the average burden; it says nothing about the next euro. The equations above do. Through its control amounts, payment levels and discrete bands, the Düsseldorf Table has become an implicit marginal incentive schedule, one that is increasingly compressed at the bottom of the income distribution.

## 6\. Bracket creep, and who owns the corridor

What the historical series shows is more than rising child support. The table’s parameters move at different speeds. Payment amounts and control amounts rise; income-band boundaries are adjusted only intermittently. The income corridor in which additional earnings remain with the paying parent is compressed step by step. That is the sense in which the system exhibits hidden bracket creep. I use it as an analogy, because independently adjusted floors and payment obligations progressively consume the income space between fixed or intermittently revised band boundaries.

### **What drives the breaks**

The series has a handful of structural breaks, and they fall into two groups.

The negative breaks come from the floors. In January 2001, the law raised what first-band payers had to pay, to secure the child’s cash subsistence minimum. In July 2001 the table itself added to it, lowering the first band’s ceiling from 2,400 to 2,250 DM while raising the control amount from 1,500 to 1,640 DM; for the rest of that year, all six two-child combinations were negative. In 2023, the self-retention amount rose by €210 in one step, from €1,160 to €1,370, calculated on the new Bürgergeld standard rate, while the first band stayed at €1,900 and the minimum support for a teenager rose by €55 ([FamRZ: the new Düsseldorf Table from 1 Jan 2023](https://www.famrz.de/redaktionsmeldungen/neue-d%C3%BCsseldorfer-tabelle-ab-dem-1-1-2023.htm?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)). The corridor for an older child fell to €67.

The positive breaks are the band ceiling being raised by hand: in 2008 from €1,300 to €1,500, in 2018 to €1,900, and in 2024 to €2,100\. Each reopened the corridor. Each time, inflation and the floors closed it again.

Read as a control system, the pattern is simple. The child’s payment follows the child’s subsistence minimum, which the law ties to the tax child allowance. The amount left to the parent follows the welfare level, set by the judges ([OLG Düsseldorf: press release on the 2024 table (Dec 2023)](https://www.olg-duesseldorf.nrw.de/behoerde/presse/Archiv/Pressemitteilungen%5Faus%5F2023/20231211%5FPM%5FDueTab2024/index.php?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)). The Federal Government described both links itself as early as 2012\. The self-retention amount had been raised in line with the Hartz IV rates, so that paying parents would not fall onto benefits. The child’s amounts could not rise, because the minimum support is tied by law to the tax allowance ([BT-Drs. 17/12008, question 25 (Dec 2012)](https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/17/120/1712008.pdf?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)). Both links are tied to subsistence benchmarks that move with prices and policy. The band ceiling has no reference at all and moves only when the judges act. That makes two closed loops and one open loop. The corridor between them is a residual, and this residual has repeatedly been allowed to drift downward (in many cases below zero) until discretionary band adjustments reopen it.

The breaks also reveal a priority. When the floors and the corridor collide, the floors win: protecting the child’s minimum and the parent’s minimum ranks above the parent’s return on work. Each decision is defensible on its own. Together they squeeze out the one quantity no one was asked to protect.

### **Nobody’s job**

This is not a failure of competence. The judges’ mandate is maintenance law: what is fair between this parent and this child. Within that mandate, protecting both floors is right. No institution appears to have a mandate to evaluate the Düsseldorf Table periodically against labour-market incentives. The courts and the Maintenance Commission of the German Family Court Association maintain the table; the federal government sets some of its statutory inputs. But neither process appears to systematically test the marginal return to additional earnings generated by the table as a whole. Even when the Federal Government was explicitly asked in 2026 about the divergence between net wages and child-support obligations, its answer discussed legal capacity and the employment incentive built into the self-retention floor, but identified no evaluation of the marginal incentive structure produced by the table as a whole ([BT-Drs. 21/4115, question 118, p. 77 (Feb 2026)](https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/21/041/2104115.pdf?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)).

That division of responsibility is unusually explicit, and it is not new. In 2012 the Federal Government stated that it has no influence on the values of the Düsseldorf Table ([BT-Drs. 17/12008, question 25 (Dec 2012)](https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/17/120/1712008.pdf?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)). When the first income band was widened for 2018, the Federal Government was asked how many children would receive less maintenance as a result. It replied that it had **no such data**, and stressed that the Düsseldorf Table was produced by representatives of the Higher Regional Courts. Its conclusion was categorical: *“The design of the Düsseldorf Table therefore does not fall within the responsibility of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection or any other federal ministry.” (*[*BT-Drs. 19/280, question 37 (Dec 2017)*](https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/002/1900280.pdf?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)*)* 

Germany reports on bracket creep in income tax every two years. No one reports on it in child support. In the United States, federal regulation requires every state to review its child-support guidelines at least every four years, against labour-market data and the subsistence needs of the paying parent ([45 CFR § 302.56: US rule on guideline reviews](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-45/subtitle-B/chapter-III/part-302/section-302.56?ref=hito-kane-mono.com)).

The child’s minimum is tied by law to the tax allowance. The parent’s floor is tied to the welfare rate. The incentive corridor between them is tied to nothing. Germany has no one whose job it is to look.

### **What comes next**

This article deliberately stays inside the first income band. The same logic extends to the whole schedule. For each band j, full payment capacity requires

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-9447909d-4e65-4da5-a7df-4d5011a2c310.png)

and the crucial comparison at each band boundary is

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/7e/3a/7e3a4c0f-b016-4968-b81e-b01e855949fb/content/images/2026/10/data-src-image-869c0df4-baf6-4840-92ab-74a88fa0e830.png)

If it is positive, crossing into the next band does not immediately improve the parent’s position: additional income is first needed to establish full capacity under the higher obligation. Part 2 reconstructs the full sequence of bands, with and without the control-amount downgrade, to show where earning corridors exist above the first band, where they narrow, and where they disappear.

The question stays the same:

**How much of Germany’s child-support income schedule now consists of income ranges in which earning more does not mean having more?**

*The Düsseldorf Table protects two floors and no margin. For a parent of two in the first band, nothing has been left between them since 2023.*

---

## Methods and data note

- **Tables:** Düsseldorf Table editions from 01.01.1979 to 01.01.2026 (32 editions), at their effective dates, from [Deutscher Familiengerichtstag: Düsseldorf Table archive](https://www.dfgt.de/index.php?ref=hito-kane-mono.com). DM values converted at 1.95583 DM per euro.
- **Income concept:** adjusted net income (bereinigtes Nettoeinkommen) as used by the table.
- **Paying parent:** employed; B is the first-band control amount, which equals the necessary self-retention amount for an employed parent.
- **Payment amounts:** table amount minus half the child benefit for minor children (first and second child). From 1 January 2001 to 31 December 2007, payment amounts follow § 1612b Abs. 5 BGB (old version): the credit is reduced insofar as it is needed to bring the payment up to 135% of the reference amount, read from each edition’s 135% income group (Federal Court of Justice, 9 November 2005, XII ZR 31/03). For January to June 2001, the rule is applied to the table of 1 July 1999.
- **Prices:** Destatis consumer price index, monthly, expressed in August 2026 euros from: Statistischer Bericht - Verbraucherpreisindex für Deutschland - Lange Reihen ab 1948 [Destatis: consumer price index, long series since 1948](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Wirtschaft/Preise/Verbraucherpreisindex/%5Finhalt.html?ref=hito-kane-mono.com) .  
One 1979 euro corresponds to about €2.94 in August 2026 prices.
- **Poverty thresholds:** EU-SILC via Destatis, 60% of median equivalized disposable income, single-person household; the income reference year is the survey year minus one [Destatis: at-risk-of-poverty threshold (EU-SILC)](https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Income-Consumption-Living-Conditions/Living-Conditions-Risk-Poverty/%5Fnode.html?ref=hito-kane-mono.com#sprg267478). WSI Verteilungsbericht for 2019 [WSI Verteilungsmonitor](http://www.wsi.de/verteilungsmonitor?ref=hito-kane-mono.com).
- **Earnings:** median gross monthly earnings, [Destatis: gross monthly earnings by industry and occupation](https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Arbeit/Verdienste/Verdienste-Branche-Berufe/Tabellen/liste-bruttomonatsverdienste.html?ref=hito-kane-mono.com) .
- **Data:** the parameter series is available on request. Corrections are welcome at dieter.joenssen@gmail.com and will be noted here with a date.