The activating labour market reforms of the German government at the beginning of the 21st century (Agenda 2010) were considered to be successful in reducing unemployment, especially long-term unemployment. But the majority of the media and also the majority of the German population consider this reform as socially unfair. While long-term unemployment fell from 1.7 to now under one million, people still believe, Hartz IV made Germany poorer. A new empirical study tells a different…