A new map published this month by the cartographer Jakub Marian gives a far more balanced impression. It does so by presenting figures using an artificial currency unit called the Purchasing Power Standard, created by the E.U. purely for statistical purposes. This measure adjusts for price differences, so that one theoretical unit of PPS can purchase the same amount of goods or services across the continent. The results below show that artificial currency converted back into Euros, in order to create a significantly different picture that is adjusted to show purchasing power parity (PPP) across Europe.
The adjusted picture shows that once tax is deducted, residents in central and southern Germany actually have the most consistently high disposable income from region to region. They’re closely followed by North Germans and Austrians, with East Germans notably lagging behind. Nordic countries, by contrast, have lower disposable incomes, especially in Denmark. France, Sweden, and the U.K. all show sharp regional divides, with clear islands of high disposable income around Paris, Stockholm, and the London region. It’s Italy, however, that shows the starkest divides. From northern Lombardy to Sicily and Calabria, average disposable income drops by more than €8,000.
Passionate believers in the high-tax and (apparently) high-wage governance systems of Europe’s Nordic countries might be a little discouraged by the results. With the exception of Norway, with its vast oil-financed sovereign wealth fund and small population, disposable incomes across the region tend to be noticeably lower than in most of Germany. Average disposable income around Paris is apparently far greater than around Copenhagen or Helsinki, while outside the major cities, average disposable incomes after tax are broadly comparable to those in Eastern Germany, a region struggling with high unemployment.
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