Matthias Bauer’s Post

This is a fascinating graphic. In healthcare, we often say that geography is destiny. I can reliably predict your health status and outcomes based upon where you live. However, geography is really just a covariate. The real drivers include socioeconomic and cultural factors, which we generally call social determinants of health (SDoH). How long ago did Germany reunite? Yet, after all those years, obvious disparities persist in a developed nation with one of the largest economies in the world. One takeaway: SDoH factors can have significant inertia - meaning that these factors are hard to change in a population, and that change, if it happens at all, can take a long time.

We talk about failed integration or people with different backgrounds than the majority. Look at the integration of the 2 former German nations, DDR and Federal Republic of Germany!

Despite being a designer, I never actually studied design in school. I studied International Relations. When I tell people how I think those two domains are intimately connected, I am still commonly met with raised eyebrows and confused expressions. But when I look back on my own career path and the things that have made me a more effective designer, I can confidently say that no other form of education could have better prepared me for the world of human-centered design than a degree in the humanities. Whether the focus is on products or policies, our design choices have an echo into the future that our typically short-term objectives rarely succeed in accounting for. With that in mind, I cannot help but look at maps like these and think about how the things that we design (whether it's a smartphone, an app, or an entire political/economic system) have a habit of returning the favor by redesigning pieces of our own internal realities.

Germany vs Germany

"We're working urgently for generational change. True success involves advancing durable solutions that will be sustained over decades and centuries." When colleagues in philanthropy and NGO leadership are targeting bold change in short timelines, I appreciate the ambition but typically respond with the comment above. I believe our work for climate and environmental justice requires a clear-eyed commitment to durable, sustained shifts. We are living this year in Berlin, learning and reading about the history and culture of Germany. This graphic below was shared with me today, and the long-term impact of the East-West divide is striking. Deep change takes sustained effort over time. #systemschange #climateaction

Greatest economic/political experiment ever performed (along with Korea) and still yielding results. (Kind of fast so hit pause and slide to study more carefully.) Interesting that former East Germany has higher percentages voting for "Ultra Right Afd" and "Left". This is consistent with my long-held view that the political continuum when defined as Right and Left is in reality a circle where far Right and far Left come together under the tent of all-powerful government. If you want to draw a meaningful line, it's best to use limited constitutional (small) government and all-powerful (big) government as the end members.

A thoughtful data analysis on the persistent differentiate economic development level between West Germany and East Germany upon years of unification. #Education is the most important one in every case and every where… Appreciate the powerful AI developed by Microsoft / LinkedIn, I could surpass the barrier of language just in one click on tab “Translate” 👍👍👍 Elias VU / Nam Nguyen-Dinh / Nam Bui / Tuan Vu / Chau PHAM / Khanh Tran / Phuong Thai / Chan Tran

Visuals can be so meaningful.

These truly are amazing maps, except...they don’t tell the true story.   Take a look at the map in the comment to this post. It seems to confirm the hypothesis that #communism in East #Germany had profoundly changed that part of the country, throwing it on an entirely different #socioeconomic path compared with West Germany. Well...not quite. The below map shows data on the share of #bluecollar workers per region from...1925 .   The post-war division of Germany into two countries, one #communist and one #capitalist, is not as great of a #naturalexperiment as it may seem. This in turn shows how difficult socio-economic #research, and thus #evidencebased #policymaking, can sometimes be.   So, why the two German states are not a perfect natural experiment? 1. East and West Germany were very different even BEFORE #WW2. And not only regarding the labor force. Before WW2, Eastern Germany showed higher support for the communist party, was almost entirely protestant (90%), while the West was roughly 50% Protestant and 50% Catholic. The level of religiousness was lower, women were more likely to work outside the home, etc., etc. Many traits typically associated with communist influence were already more pronounced in the East before the communists came to power. 2. Emigration. Until 1961 when the Berlin wall was erected, around 20% of Germans from the East fled to the West. And this group was not random: these were relatively younger, and better educated people. 3. The German Democratic Republic (East) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West) had different economic starting points as Russia (how surprising) pretty much looted whatever it could from its zone of control (East). The cost of #reparations per capita in the East are estimated to have been 73% higher than in the West. Source, which I recommend to those interested in the subject and which I based this post on is a fascinating 2020 paper: The Separation and Reunification of Germany: Rethinking a Natural Experiment Interpretation of the Enduring Effects of Communism, by Sascha O. Becker, Lukas Mergele, and Ludger Woessmann. This paper is also the source of the map I shared in the comment.

He is 1000% correct on every part of this speech.