About GGS

The GGS is a survey on life-course and family dynamics across various countries. It surveys people aged 18 to 79, with follow-up surveys at three and six-year intervals to track how people’s lives unfold. The GGS questionnaire, created by an international team of social scientists, addresses pertinent topics, including:

Life course transitions (e.g., marriage, divorce, childbirth)
Demographic behavior (e.g., fertility intentions, family planning)
Intergenerational relationships
Economic conditions and employment
Gender roles and equality

GGS data is a freely accessible data resource that is valuable for researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders interested in demographic research and family studies. Its high-quality, comprehensive data support a wide range of research and policy analyses, helping to address demographic challenges and improve societal well-being.

Looking for details on specific rounds of GGS?

Generations and Gender Survey – Round I

GGS-I started in 2004. It has collected information from over 200,000 individuals aged 18 to 79 from 19 countries and contributed to the social sciences as a unique longitudinal data resource on families and life course trajectories.

Generations and Gender Survey – Round II

GGS-II started in 2020 with an updated questionnaire, renewed methodology as well as refreshed samples to ensure that social scientists and policymakers have access to the highest quality data possible.

Path towards GGS

The GGS follows a tradition of international demographic surveys, starting with the World Fertility Survey (WFS) in the 1970s. The WFS was launched to address concerns about rapid population growth driven by high fertility rates. While most European countries experienced declining fertility rates and demographic changes, only Portugal participated in the WFS, with others conducting affiliated surveys without cross-national harmonization.

In the early 1990s, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) initiated the Family and Fertility Survey (FFS) with a standardized questionnaire used across Europe. The FFS aimed to provide comparable data on marriages, cohabitation, divorces, and births, addressing the need for standardized demographic data due to declining fertility rates and increasing marital instability. The FFS collected data from over 100,000 women and 50,000 men in 23 countries, enabling extensive cross-cultural studies.

Recognizing the success of the FFS, the UNECE, together with leading demographic institutes, decided to build on the FFS’s key features while expanding the scope. The result was the Generations and Gender Programme, with the GGS as its main instrument. The GGS covers a wider age range (18-79) and includes a panel dimension with interviews every three years. Additionally, a Contextual Database complements the data, providing institutional, social, and economic context.

Key Features

Cross-national comparability

More than 20 countries have conducted at least one wave of data collection. The comparative focus allows analyses of the ways in which policies, culture and economic circumstances influence dependencies between men and women and between the young and the old.

A longitudinal design

GGS applies a panel design – collecting information on the same persons at three-year intervals – to allow the examination of causes and consequences of inequalities between genders and generations.

A large sample size

GGS targets an average of 10,000 respondents per country, making it possible to study numerical minorities and uncommon events.

A broad age range

The GGP collects data on the whole life course by interviewing respondents aged 18-79. It also enables analysis of multiple generations by asking extensive questions about intergenerational exchange and support

The combination of micro and macro data

Alongside the micro data collected via surveys, the GGP has a contextual database with over 100 indicators which cover not only the year of the survey but also retrospective indicators covering the past 40 years to be used alongside the retrospective data in the surveys.

A theory-driven and multidisciplinary questionnaire

The GGS questionnaire is developed and maintained by a team of leading social scientists from demography, sociology and economics. The questionnaire seeks to bring together a wide range of subjects that examine the causes and consequences of family change.

Publications explaining the GGS

Discover key resources that provide detailed insights into the Generations and Gender Survey:

Vikat, A., Spéder, Z., Beets, G., Billari, F. C., Bühler, C., Désesquelles, A., Fokkema, T., Hoem, J. M., MacDonald, A. L., Neyer, G., Pailhé, A., Pinnelli, A., & Solaz, A. (2007). Generations and Gender Survey (GGS): Towards a better understanding of relationships and processes in the life course. Demographic Research, 17(14), 389–440. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2007.17.14

This publication explains the theoretical framework, survey design, and questionnaire structure of the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), detailing its key features such as panel design, multidisciplinarity, and context sensitivity, as well as its focus on life course processes, economic factors, and attitudes, and the rationale behind the inclusion of specific topics and optional sub-modules.

Gauthier, A. H., Kong, S., Grünwald, O., Bujard, M., Caporali, A., Deimantas, V. J., Emery, T., Jablonski, W., Koops, J., Rijken, A., & Schumann, A. (2023). Data Brief: The Generations and Gender Survey second round (GGS-II). GGP Technical Paper Series. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10220746

This publication focuses on the baseline wave (wave 1) of the GGS-II. It demonstrates the uniqueness of GGS-II in terms of the wide geographical coverage and a mixed-mode of data collection, as well as the innovations in the survey content of the baseline questionnaire.