Attitudes and Reported Experiences of the German Welfare State: A Panel Study 2015 – 2016 – 2017

The German Survey “Attitudes and Reported Experiences of the German Welfare State” is a joint project of the University of Duisburg-Essen, the University of Gothenburg, and the Institute for Social Research, Oslo. The data set has been developed with respect to an extensive comparability with a parallel study conducted in Norway (see Kumlin et al. 2017).

Starting in 2015, information of 3,393 respondents from a German population sample was collected in three annually repeated waves until 2017. The main interest of the data collection lies on the temporal change of the data, whereas the sampling design, an online quota sample, does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the underlying German population. The aim of this academic study is to create a high-quality panel data set, focusing on attitudes towards the welfare state within the German population. In addition, questions on political, religious, social and demographic topics were asked.<br>Political participation in the last four years (participation in a demonstration, writing about political issues in a newspaper, online newspaper or blog, member of a political party, member of a trade union, member of another political organization); general social trust; group-related trust (Hartz IV recipients, richest people in Germany, people met for the first time, Germans without migration background, people with migration background from non-European countries, people with migration background from Eastern Europe); interest in politics; frequency of political discussions; frequency of political information; left-right self-ranking; attitude toward political asylum; attitude toward the right to social benefits for migrants; party affiliation; party voted for in the 2013 federal election; other party voted for in the 2013 federal election; actual voting behavior in 2013; party preference (Sunday question); party preference (Sunday question - open); retrospective voting behavior in the 2015 federal election; retrospective voting behavior in the 2015 federal election (open); probability of party choice (CDU/CSU, SPD, Bündnis90/Die Grünen, FDP, Die Linke, AfD, ALFA, NPD, Piratenpartei Deutschland); assessment of the living situation of various groups in Germany (pensioners and retirees, unemployed, families with children, single parents, recipients of disability pensions, recipients of Hartz IV, people with a migration background from European countries and from non-European countries); perceived personal risk in the next 12 months with regard to: unemployment, caring for family members, inability to work, divorce, parental leave, not enough money for household needs, pension due to reduced earning capacity; use of various facilities or services (family doctor, emergency doctor or emergency room in hospital, specialist, medical specialist, retirement or nursing home, home care by a private provider or by one of the welfare associations, rehabilitation center, public or private kindergarten, daycare center or day nursery, day nanny or day father, state elementary school without church orientation or with church orientation, private elementary school, open all-day care after school, secondary state school, secondary private school with church orientation, vocational training, college or university). with church orientation, private elementary school, open all-day care after school, secondary state school, secondary school with church orientation, secondary private school, vocational training, technical college or university); satisfaction with these facilities or services; personal experience with these facilities and services (staff worked quickly and efficiently, I got the support and help I was entitled to, staff were helpful and listened to me, I had the opportunity to influence the type of support and help I received, I had difficulty finding the right person to talk to, I was treated worse than most, I had the opportunity to choose between different facilities); use of transfer benefits (unemployment benefit 1, Hartz IV, sickness benefit, reduced earning capacity pension, early retirement pension, company pension, retirement or pension); framing experiment: Assessment of future levels in Germany in various areas of social security and provision of public services (health care, old-age pension and old-age pensions, support in case of temporary incapacity to work due to illness, unemployment benefits, social assistance/unemployment benefit II/basic income support, care for the elderly and sick, public child care in kindergartens/day nursery/daycare centers); evaluation of various strategies to adjust social benefits and services (lower the level of social benefits and services, raise general taxation levels, increase fees for the use of public services and contributions to social insurance, push recipients of social support more to look for and accept new jobs, offer better retraining and continuing education measures for the unemployed and sick, improve public child care and cash payments for parents); need for the above strategies; agreement with statements on mandatory measures or prohibitions for the unemployed (taking a job with a lower salary, taking a job below the level of education, taking a job despite a change of residence); agreement with statements about social security and public care systems in Germany (in the long run, Germany will not be able to afford the current level of social security and public care; in the long run, Germany will only be able to afford the current level of social security and public care if fees and taxes are increased; in the long run, an increasingly aging society will mean that Germany will not be able to afford the current level of social security and public care; in the long run, a large number of non-working people of working age will mean that Germany will not be able to afford the current level of social security and public care, Germany will not be able to afford the current level of social security and public care in the long run, immigration will not be able to afford the current level of social security and public care in the long run, a welfare state that equalizes differences between rich and poor is good for the German economy in the long run, for a society to be fair, differences in living standards between people should be small, most unemployed people do not really try to find a job, workers often pretend to be sick in order to stay at home); responsibility of the state in various areas (ensuring a job for everyone who wants to work, reducing income differences between rich and poor, ensuring adequate health care for the sick, ensuring adequate standard of living in old age, ensuring adequate standard of living for the unemployed, ensuring adequate child care facilities for working parents, ensuring adequate standard of living for people with migration background, ensuring adequate standard of living for the poorest in society); preference with regard to the trade-off between social benefits vs. taxes; framing experiment on family policy (problem for German economy, problem for financing government services, more social benefits for higher taxes, parental allowance or make parental leave more generous, better provision of daycare centers, parental leave regulations and parental allowance regulations); personal trust in various public institutions, organizations and groups of people (media, police, courts, federal government, state government, political parties, Bundestag, city or municipal council, European Commission, European Parliament); attitude toward European unification; type of health insurance; type of health insurance open; satisfaction with health insurance, unemployment insurance and pension insurance in the Federal Republic (social security network); general willingness to take risks; willingness to take risks in relation to the following areas: Driving, financial investments, leisure and sports, professional career, health, trust in other people); religion and worldview: religious affiliation; religiosity; frequency of religious service attendance; fears with regard to the refugee crisis, the economic situation, global warming, international terrorism, the state of the European Union, globalization, political developments in Turkey, conflicts in Ukraine and the use of nuclear energy; lifestyle: frequency of use of various media (daily newspaper, Internet, magazines, radio, television).

Education, occupation: major field of study (faculty); highest educational degree; highest professional degree; industry of the company; personal net income; household net income; employment situation; employment status (full-time, part-time); professional position in the company; occupational group; occupational group open; private vs. public sector; managerial responsibility; number of subordinate persons; company size.

Living situation: car in household; division of responsibility for purchasing groceries and daily necessities; number of persons in household (household size); number of children under 18 in household; home ownership (owner-occupied apartment, rented apartment, owner-occupied house, rented house, no home ownership);region of residence while in school between ages 12 and 16; current living situation; living situation open-ended; number of siblings; siblings sorted by age; sex oldest sibling; children: Number of children under 18; year of birth and sex of children; male children; female children; female/male child under 6 months, between 6 and 12 months, 1 year old, etc. up to 17 years old; age categories; age of children; age categories; pension insurance policies taken out (Riester pension, disability insurance, life insurance (term or endowment), liability insurance, long-term care insurance).

Demography: birthday; month of birth; year of birth; age and sex of respondent; age categorized; age and sex categorized; migration background; country of birth of parents abroad; country of birth Germany; country of birth outside Germany; open specification country of birth outside Germany; marital status; federal state.

Additionally coded were: Respondent ID; year of survey wave; interview start; interview end; interview duration in minutes; mobile device; region west/east; Nielsen area; degree of urbanization; assignment to experimental groups; education combined (according to AGOF); weighting factor.