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This map shows just how broke North-Rhine Westphalia is

DPA/The Local
DPA/The Local - [email protected]
This map shows just how broke North-Rhine Westphalia is
Sunset at a disused coal mine in NRW. Photo: DPA

On Sunday voters in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) will go to the polls to choose a new state parliament. The state is still struggling with deindustrialization, as this map shows.

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A hundred years ago the region that is now NRW was the industrial heartland of Germany. Even after the Second World War, mining in the Ruhr region played an important part in putting a defeated Germany back on its feet.

But decline of the coal industry since the 1960s has had a damaging effect on the region's economy, leaving it with some of the highest unemployment and crime rates in the country.

Minister President Hannelore Kraft, a Social Democrat, has invested heavily in education since taking power in 2010. But a public debt of €179.6 billion lays bare the challenge that she or rival Armin Laschet of the Christian Democrats will face in the next legislative period.

Infografik: So verschuldet ist Nordrhein-Westfalen, Statista
Public debt in German states on December 31st, 2016 (in billions of Euros).
 
The graphic above shows that NRW’s public debt is three times as high as that of Lower Saxony, which has the second highest debt in the country.

But the picture is not so gloomy when one looks at public debt per inhabitant. The city states of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen all have higher debts per person than Germany's most populous state, as does the small southwestern state of Saarland.

But NRW’s €13,285 of debt per head is still far higher than Baden-Württemberg’s €5,685.

On the plus side, NRW announced in January that last year it took on no new public debts for the first time since 1972.

SEE ALSO: Everything you need to know before the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia

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