As the German constitution aims for equal living conditions, a huge number of political measures to enhance the conditions in the new states were undertaken after unification (known as the “Aufbau Ost”). In the new states, expenditure per capita rose significantly over the average expenditure of the old states and their municipalities and huge budget deficits occurred. Beginning in the mid-1990s, expenditure ...
The present study compares the perceptions of fairness of national earned incomes between the populations of Germany and the rest of Europe based on recent data from the European Social Survey (ESS). The vast majority of European respondents consider very low gross earned incomes to be unjustly low. By contrast, very high incomes are less frequently considered too high in Germany than they are in the ...