Generations and Gender Survey Wave 1 - Consolidated

The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) provides micro-level data with the aim of significantly improving the knowledge base for social science and policymaking in Europe and developed countries elsewhere. In Europe 2020, the European Union develops a strategy "to help us come out stronger from the crisis and turn the EU into a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy delivering high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion". The economic crisis affects not only day-to-day decisions, but also fundamental choices at all stages of people's lives: marriage and childbearing, the combination of employment and caring responsibilities for the young and the old, retirement, housing, and ageing well. The GGS has been developed to provide scientists with high-quality data to contribute scientifically grounded answers to these key policy questions. Survey content focuses on intergenerational and gender relations between people, expressed in care arrangements and the organization of paid and unpaid work. Key feature of the survey are:

• Cross-national comparability. In each country data is collected on the basis of a common international questionnaire and guidelines about the methodology. Data processing includes central harmonization of national datasets.
• A broad age range. It includes respondents between the ages of 18 and 80.
• A longitudinal design. It has a panel design, collecting information on the same persons at three-year intervals.
• A large sample size. It has an average of 9,000 respondents per country at Wave 1.
• A theory-driven and multidisciplinary questionnaire. It provides data for policy relevant research by demographers, economists, sociologists, social policy researchers, social psychologists and epidemiologists. The questionnaire is inspired by the theory of planned behavior.
• Possibility to combine the survey data with macro data provided by the GGP Contextual Database. This combination enables analyses of individuals and families in their cultural, economic, political, social and policy contexts.