The German Internal Migration Map

The former East Germany shows up clearly on many maps visualizing German socio-economic data. In Germany's Red Belt Area you can see some examples of maps revealing how the former German Democratic Republic under-performs the former West Germany in a number of areas, including income & disposable income. However, 28 years after reunification, there is now some evidence that this inequality between the former East & West Germany is beginning to narrow.

For example yesterday Zeit Online published an interactive map which explores the history of migration between areas in the former East Germany and regions of the former West Germany. The animated map in East-West migration: The millions who left visualizes the patterns of migration between East and West since German reunification. It reveals that although huge numbers of people fled East Germany after reunification the tide has now turned and many Germans are now moving in the opposite direction.

The map clearly shows that after reunification there was a huge exodus as millions of former East Germans relocated to regions in the west of the country. Nearly 25% of the former German Democratic Republic moved to the West in the first few years after reunification. This huge loss of population had a devastating effect on the infrastructure of the region. Many schools, hospitals and cultural institutions were forced to close down because they no longer had enough employees to keep them open.

However, nearly 30 years after reunification, the tide has finally turned. Now for the first time since the Berlin Wall was destroyed more people are moving from West to East than the other way round. It appears that people are now being attracted to live in the East. This may be because the socio-economic inequalities between East and West Germany are finally becoming less pronounced.

Last week the Hamburger Abendblatt mapped the amount of disposable income across Germany. While this map revealed that the regions of East Germany have less disposable income than Germans in the rest of the country it also showed that East Germans are in fact catching up. The disposable income map of Germany includes a choropleth layer which visualizes the areas which have seen the biggest increases in disposable income since 2011. On this measurement East Germans are doing much better. According to the Hambureger Abendblatt "with an increase of around 13.9 percent, the increase in income in the East was above the national average".