Everyone Happy: Living Standards in Germany 25 Years after Reunification

Maximilian Priem and Jürgen Schupp

DIW Economic Bulletin, 2014, vol. 4, issue 11, 65-71

Abstract: It is now a quarter of a century since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the gap in living standards between eastern and western Germany is still not fully closed. Admittedly, this could not realistically have been expected. Despite the increase in life satisfaction in eastern Germany, the east-west divide prevails. Evidence of this can be found in the latest data from the long-term Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study gathered by DIW Berlin in cooperation with the fieldwork organization TNS Infratest Sozialforschung. According to the SOEP data, in 2013, eastern Germans were far less happy than western Germans, although the level of life satisfaction in the east was higher than at any other point in the history of the survey, which was conducted for the first time in eastern Germany in 1990—shortly before economic, currency, and social union. Other subjective indicators reveal differences in satisfaction with household income, health, and childcare. In contrast, job satisfaction, as well as satisfaction with housing, housework, and leisure time have converged. Eastern Germans worry more about crime levels and their own financial circumstances, whereas concerns about xenophobia and employment have diminished throughout Germany. The SOEP surveys show that, according to population, living standards in Germany are now largely aligned. Despite a number of specific problems which, in the coming years, will include the development of new pensions in eastern Germany in particular, German reunification has proven to be an extraordinary success story.

Keywords: German Unification; Satisfaction; Well-Being; SOEP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_ ... n_bull_2014-11-9.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwdeb:2014-11-9

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in DIW Economic Bulletin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().