Maps of Inequality in Marburg – Inequality and Distributive Politics

By Nils Strecker and Miquel Pellicer

Inequality and distributive politics are relevant everywhere, not only in distant and foreign places. We wish to bring awareness to this topic to our community: the town of Marburg. We wish to disseminate information on inequality and politics in the form of maps. As a first step we provide a limited number of maps that capture particularly important aspects of our topic: spatial inequalities in socioeconomic outcomes and in political participation. Overtime, we hope to add more resources, including the spatial distribution of government spending, and of citizen political preferences. We hope this site will grow to become a resource that helps citizens and local politicians to engage further on the topic of inequality and distributive politics.

Glossary

¹Population: This layer displays population data in a 100m grid, as collected by the federal and state statistical offices in the course of the 2011 census. For each square, the total amount of inhabitants is given, unless they are uninhabited, or the population count is undisclosed due to other reasons.

²Welfare: For this measure, the numbers of SGB II and SGB XII recipients in 2020 are aggregated for each of Marburg’s 33 statistical districts. SGB II payments are basic social assistance for individuals who are classified as fit for employment, while SGB XII payments are primarily received by individuals who are classified as unfit for employment due to age or health condition. The data was compiled by the municipality of Marburg with help from the county of Marburg-Biedenkopf. These are the two entities responsible for distributing SGB XII and SGB II welfare payments, respectively.

³Voter turnout: These numbers represent the total voter turnout in each statistical district in a recent local, state or federal election, depending on your selection. The raw data is published by the municipal election office of Marburg. Due to a few differences between the geographical dimensions of in-person and by-mail voting districts, some numbers have to be estimated. This could lead to very minor inaccuracies in the total turnout numbers for some of the statistical districts.

⁴Vote share: This layer displays the share of votes cast for the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the most prominent right-wing party in Germany. The raw data is published by the municipal election office of Marburg. Due to a few differences between the geographical dimensions of in-person and by-mail voting districts, some numbers have to be estimated. This could lead to very minor inaccuracies in the total turnout numbers for some of the statistical districts.