The Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) aims to improve the knowledge base for policymaking in UNECE countries.
The Programme’s main goal is to provide data that can contribute to enhanced understanding of demographic and social developments and of the factors that influence these developments, with particular attention given to relationships between children and parents (generations) and those between partners (gender).
The GGP aims to collect and collate data that can be used to explain people’s choices in forming and dissolving partnerships, having children, deciding where and with whom to live, and what they do with their lives. A wide range of topics is covered—from economic activity to social networks, from values and attitudes to health and well-being—meaning that the full spectrum of factors influencing demographic choices and outcomes in contemporary developed societies is available for analysis.
The GGP is distinctive for a number of reasons. First, it is an international project involving the collaboration of a broad range of countries: not only Western European countries, but also countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, as well as some countries outside of the UNECE region. The project aims for a high degree of comparability in methods of data collection, and the centralized harmonization process ensures the maximum possible level of cross-country comparability.
The multi-wave panel design, the multi-disciplinary theoretical underpinning to the survey instruments, the use of large nationally-representative samples and the inclusion of respondents from across the adult age range combine to make the GGP a unique data source for research on family-building behaviour, household formation, intergenerational relationships and gender dynamics in both longitudinal and cross-sectional perspectives.
The contextual database adds to the value of the GGP with harmonized and comprehensive information on the policy, economic and social factors which surround the populations whose demographic behaviour is recorded in the surveys. Stemming from a recognition that people do not make decisions in a vacuum but rather are influenced by their environment, the detailed contextual database permits researchers to merge micro- and macro-level data in their investigations. The contextual database covers topics ranging from pensions and healthcare to employment and childcare regulations, from taxes and benefits to aggregate demographic indicators.
If you wish to access the survey data or contextual database, please visit the main GGP website.