Study on the Christmas classic – how the potato salad divides our country – politics

by time news

It’s THE Christmas dish par excellence: Potato salad with sausages!

According to a recent survey by Statista Global Consumer Survey, the simple dish is served in every third German household on Christmas Eve – and beats other classics such as roast goose and duck or raclette.

For their part, the economists Jan-Marten Wendt and Christoph Schröder from the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) have suspicions as to where the popularity of the fast food comes from: December 24th is still a working day across Germany. In the stress of Christmas, the simple dish is just right for Germans, they write in a new analysis that deals exclusively with the potato meal. Compared to the classic roast goose, the dish is also much more affordable.

But from here it gets interesting: The dish on the Christmas plate may be the same in millions of households. But the price that Germans pay for it in Flensburg, Dresden or on Lake Constance is far apart!

To be precise: The prices for the ingredients differ by almost 25 percent, depending on the place where you shop.

The two economists came to this conclusion when evaluating price data from the supermarket chain Rewe. To make the comparison fair, the IW scientists used a simple recipe consisting of potatoes, onions, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, yoghurt and sausages for four people as the basis for the calculation.

► Households in Altenburger Land (Thuringia), Stendal and Magdeburg (both Saxony-Anhalt) were the cheapest: Here, the shopping cart costs the lowest in Germany at EUR 5.05.

► On the other hand, citizens living in the Lake Constance district had to dig deepest into their wallets. Exactly 6.24 euros were due here. The Vulkaneifel in Rhineland-Palatinate is in second place with 5.87 euros.

According to the researchers, it is striking that the prices in the new federal states, but also in some rural regions, are particularly low. On the one hand, this is due to the purchasing power of customers: On average, people in the east still earn less than in the rest of the country.

“The shop rents are also lower in the new federal states than in the west. The markets there can therefore operate profitably even with lower prices, ”says IW economist Schröder. “In addition, the following applies: In inner-city locations, products are often more expensive than on the outskirts.”

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