IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/diw/diwwob/81-40-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Alle zufrieden: Lebensverhältnisse in Deutschland

Author

Listed:
  • Maximilian Priem
  • Jürgen Schupp

Abstract

Already a quarter of a century since the fall of the 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 the creation of the economic, currency, and social union. Other subjective indicators reveal differences in satisfaction with household income, health, and child care. In contrast, satisfaction with housing, domestic tasks, work, and leisure time has 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 the population, living standards in Germany are now largely aligned. Despite a number of problems in the detail, 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. 25 Jahre nach dem Fall der Mauer haben sich die Lebensverhältnisse in Ost- und Westdeutschland noch nicht vollständig angeglichen. Das war freilich in realistischer Betrachtung auch nicht zu erwarten. Trotz steigender Lebenszufriedenheit in den neuen Bundesländern konnte der Ost-West-Unterschied noch nicht nivelliert werden. Dies belegen die aktuellsten vom DIW Berlin in Zusammenarbeit mit TNS Infratest Sozialforschung erhobenen Daten der Langzeitstudie Sozio-oekonomisches Panel (SOEP). Demnach sind Menschen in Ostdeutschland im Jahr 2013 signifikant weniger zufrieden als in Westdeutschland, obwohl ihre Zufriedenheit so hoch ist wie nochnie im Zeitraum der Erhebung, die dort im Juni 1990 – kurz vor der Wirtschafts-, Währungs- und Sozialunion – erstmals durchgeführt wurde. Weitere subjektive Indikatoren zeigen Differenzen in der Zufriedenheit mit dem Haushaltseinkommen, der Gesundheit und der Kinderbetreuung. Angeglichen hat sich die Zufriedenheit mit der Wohnung, der Haushaltstätigkeit, Arbeit und Freizeit. Die Menschen in Ostdeutschland sorgen sich stärker um die eigene wirtschaftliche Situation und Kriminalität, während die Sorge um Ausländerfeindlichkeit und den Arbeitsplatz in ganz Deutschland abgenommen hat. Die SOEP-Befragungen zeigen: Die Lebensverhältnisse in Deutschland sind aus Sicht der Menschen weitgehend angeglichen. Trotz etlicher Probleme im Detail, wozu in den nächsten Jahren insbesondere die Entwicklung der Neurenten in Ostdeutschland zählen wird, ist die deutsche Wiedervereinigung eine ungewöhnliche Erfolgsgeschichte.

Suggested Citation

  • Maximilian Priem & Jürgen Schupp, 2014. "Alle zufrieden: Lebensverhältnisse in Deutschland," DIW Wochenbericht, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 81(40), pages 1001-1008.
  • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwob:81-40-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.483786.de/14-40-9.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Benjamin Held & Hans Diefenbacher & Dorothee Rodenhäuser, 2016. "Leben in Nordrhein-Westfalen: subjektive Einschätzungen als Teil der Wohlfahrtsmessung," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 847, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Benjamin Held, 2019. "Leben in Schleswig-Holstein: subjektive Einschätzungen als Teil der Wohlfahrtsmessung," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 1044, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    German Unification; Satisfaction; Well-Being; SOEP;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwwob:81-40-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.