International Social Survey Programme: Social Inequality V - ISSP 2019

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a continuous programme of cross-national collaboration running annual surveys on topics important for the social sciences. The programme started in 1984 with four founding members - Australia, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States – and has now grown to almost 50 member countries from all over the world. As the surveys are designed for replication, they can be used for both, cross-national and cross-time comparisons. Each ISSP module focuses on a specific topic, which is repeated in regular time intervals. Please, consult the documentation for details on how the national ISSP surveys are fielded. The present study focuses on questions about social inequality.<br>Importance of different opportunities for getting ahead (wealthy family, well-educated parents, good education, hard work, knowing the right people, political connections, giving bribes, person´s race and religion, gender); estimation of actual and reasonable earnings for occupational groups: doctor in general practice, chairman of a large national corporation, shop assistant, unskilled worker in a factory, cabinet minister in the national government; concerns about inequality: income differences are too large in respondent´s country; feeling angry about differences in wealth between the rich and the poor (10 point scale); rating the fairness of income distribution in the country.

Social policy and redistribution: responsibility of the government to reduce income differences, the government should provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed; Reducing inequality by market actors: responsibility of private companies to reduce the differences in pay between their employees; market actor with the greatest responsibility for reducing differences in income (private companies, government, trade-unions, high-income individuals themselves, low-income individuals themselves, income differences do not need to be reduced); government inefficacy: most politicians in the country do not care about reducing the differences in income between people with high incomes and people with low incomes; rating of the government´s success in reducing the differences in income; opinion on taxation (people with high incomes should pay a larger share of their income in taxes than those with low incomes, the same share, or a smaller share); general rating of taxes in the country as much too high, too high, about right, too low, or much too low; market inequality in social services (just or unjust that people with higher incomes can buy better health care/ better education for their children than people with lower incomes); perceptions of global inequality (present economic differences between rich and poor countries are too large, people in wealthy countries should make an additional tax contribution to help people in poor countries, people from poor countries should be allowed to work in wealthy countries).

Social conflict: rating of social conflicts between different social groups (poor people and rich people, the working class and die middle class, management and workers, young people and older people, people born in the country and people from other countries who have come to live in the country).

Subjective social class / class mobility: Top-Bottom self-placement; Top-Bottom placement of the family the respondent grew up in; Top-Bottom self-placement in 10 years; subjective social class.

Pay criteria: importance of different pay criteria (how much responsibility goes with the job, the number of years spent in education and training, whether the person has children to support, how well he or she does the job).

Characterisation of the actual and the preferred type of society of the country, measured by classification on pyramid diagrams (image of society).

Lived experience of inequality: frequency of contact with people who are a lot poorer than the respondent; frequency of contact with people who are a lot richer than the respondent.

Economic insecurity: difficulties to make ends meet from total household´s income currently and during the next 12 months; frequency of how often a meal is skipped because there is not enough money for food.

Social trust (people can be trusted vs. can´t be too careful in dealing with people).

Background questions: Objective social mobility: father’s and mother´s employment relationship in respondent´s youth; main occupation of father and mother in respondent´s youth.

Optional variables:
Lay explanations of inequality (workers would not bother to get skills and qualifications unless they were paid extra for having them, large differences in income are necessary for country´s prosperity, inequality continues because it benefits the rich and powerful, inequality continues to exist because ordinary people don´t join together to get rid of it).

Perceptions of global inequality: rating of differences in wealth between rich and poor countries as fair or unfair.

Objective social mobility: father´s and mother´s type of job when the respondent was (14-15-16) years; type of job the respondent has now in his current or last job; type of job the spouse/ partner has now in the current or last job.

Demography: sex; year of birth; age; years of full-time schooling; highest completed degree of education (country-specific); highest completed degree of education (derived from country specific degree); work: currently, formerly, or never in paid work; hours worked weekly; employment relationship; supervision of other employees; number of other employees supervised; type of organisation (for profit/ non-profit, public/ private); occupation (ISCO 2008); main status; living in steady partnership; trade union membership; religious affiliation (country-specific); groups of religious affiliation (derived from country specific religion); frequency of attendance of religious services; top-bottom self-placement; participation in the last general election; party the respondent voted for in the last general election (country-specific); left-right placement of party the respondent voted for in last general election by expert judgment on party positions; self-assessed affiliation with one or two particular ethnic groups (country-specific); number of persons in the household (household size); household composition: number of adults in the household; number of children above school entry age in the household; number of children below school age in the household; personal income (country-specific); household income (country-specific); legal partnership status; migration background: father´s country of birth; mother´s country of birth; place of living: urban - rural; region (country-specific).

Information on spouse/partner: work: currently, formerly, or never in paid work; hours worked weekly; employment relationship; supervision of other employees; occupation (ISCO 2008); main status.

Additionally coded: Respondent ID; case substitution flag; flag variable indicating partially completed cases; date of interview (year, month, day); language of the interview; weight; administration mode of data-collection; country (ISO 3166); country/ sample (ISO 3166); country (Prefix ISO 3166).