Value Change and Social-structural Transformation

Research project P 14014 Value Change and Social-structural Transformation Max HALLER 08.05.2000 The project starts from the fact that unemployment and public deficits have been increasing strongly in Western Europe as well as - albeit to a somewhat lesser degree - in Austria since the mid-Seventies. The consequence is a growing split between persons and households with secure and good incomes, and others with part-time and marginal jobs and inadequate incomes. The main thesis of the project is that these tendencies are a consequence of both structural tendencies and particular value orientations of the Austrian and European populations. Concerning structural aspects, the particular force of well-organized groups has to be mentioned (besides of demographic and technological changes). Concerning value orientations, on the one side, the specifically strong striving after security in Europe is relevant. On the other side, European integration has initiated a reform process in which elements of achievement and competition became stronger not only in the economic, but also in other societal spheres. The project has the intent to investigate this contradictory phase in which Austrian and European societies find themselves at present primarily from the subjective point of view of the perceptions and value orientations of the populations. The project focusses on three thematic areas: (1) Values in the area of work (work and achievement orientations, evaluations of working time, female work etc.); (2) perceptions and values concerning social inequality and justice; (3) attitudes to the welfare state and alternative forms for providing help and security (e.g., social relations and support systems). The main empirical basis of the project is the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) which now comprises thirty countries, twenty of them in Europe. It is proposed to replicate the following ISSP-surveys in Austria: ISSP- 97: ,Work orientations"; ISSP-99: ,Perceptions of and attitudes toward social inequality"; ISSP-2001: ,Social relations and support systems". In addition, other ISSP-surveys which are already available shall be reanalysed (e.g., ISSP-94: ,Family and changing gender roles", ISSP-95: ,National identity"). Since several of the ISSP-surveys have been carried out already one or two times before, also changes in value orientations since the late Eighties can be investigated. Supplementing the studies and analyses of subjective perceptions and attitudes, objective structural changes and some of the institutional preconditions concerning employment and work, social and economic inequality and changes in government intervention and welfare state shall be analysed by using available data sources of the OECD, ILO and EUROSTAT.