Abstract
For people living in the former East Germany, reunification with the former West Germany fundamentally transformed the sociopolitical system and most domains of everyday life. Previous research has revealed temporal shifts in average life satisfaction after reunification in the former East German population as a whole, but so far little is known about heterogeneity in patterns of adjustment within the population. Building on evidence of considerable diversity in trajectories of adjustment to other critical life events, in the current study we use longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study and growth mixture models to identify typical yet distinct trajectories of life satisfaction among former East Germans, covering the period just before reunification and four years thereafter. We identified four trajectories: continuously satisfied (experienced by 17% of the sample), upward adjusters (24%), downward adjusters (34%), and continuously dissatisfied (25%). Results of logistic regression analyses indicate that the propensity to follow a particular trajectory was strongly predicted by an individual’s baseline economic (employment, but not income), socio-relational (loneliness) and personal (education, satisfaction with health) resources. Whereas former East Germans with more resources just prior to reunification were more likely to maintain high or increase in life satisfaction, their peers with fewer resources were more apt to either maintain low or decrease in life satisfaction. People in their mid-twenties through mid-fifties (i.e., prime working age) at the time of reunification were also more likely to maintain low life satisfaction. Accordingly, reunification affected the unfolding of individual lives differently.
Highlights
In November 1989, an entire population experienced the same life-changing event: Literally overnight, the Berlin Wall fell and, in October 1990—sooner than anybody might have expected—the two German states re-united
How well did former East Germans adapt to reunification? Previous studies used life satisfaction, understood as a global evaluation of one’s life compared to how life ought to be, as a suitable indicator of adjustment to critical life events (e.g., Diener et al, 2018; Infurna et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2011)
While results about average trajectories of life satisfaction have been highly informative for understanding the overall effect of reunification on the life satisfaction of the former East German population as a whole, they have been less informative about heterogeneity in patterns of adjustment within the population
Summary
In November 1989, an entire population experienced the same life-changing event: Literally overnight, the Berlin Wall fell and, in October 1990—sooner than anybody might have expected—the two German states re-united. Because previous studies focused only on mean-level changes, to date little is known about potential heterogeneity in patterns of adjustment within the former East German population. It is crucial, to examine such heterogeneities to identify groups that are vulnerable to challenges arising from critical life events, as well as groups that manage to adapt more successfully. We built on evidence showing considerable diversity in trajectories of adjustment to other critical life events (e.g., Infurna et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2011) and apply Growth Mixture Models (GMM) to data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). To examine associations between trajectory membership and life stage as well as resource indicators, we use logistic regression models (SOEP 2019)
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