Generations and Gender Programme Belgium (GGP Belgium)

Changing families and populations are presenting growing challenges for industrialized societies. As a result of low fertility levels prevailing for a long time, many countries are now expected to face labour shortages simultaneously with the demand to support a rapidly growing number of retired persons. At the same time, younger generations tend to postpone marriage and parenting. Increased prevalence of consensual unions, decreasing stability of co-residential partnerships and the emergence of non-residential partnerships are other trends that can be seen in many countries. Multifaceted family change requires that governments and other social partners monitor and, when necessary, step in to help families preserve and strengthen the ties that bind their members. To successfully meet these and other challenges, the UNECE Population Activity Unit launched the Generations & Gender Programme (GGP) to equip policy makers with a better understanding of the causes underlying recent developments and their consequences, with particular attention given to the relationships between children and parents (generations) and between partners (gender).
The Generations and Gender Programme consists of two parts: on the hand, a large-scale survey, the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) with micro-level data, and, on the other hand, a contextual database with macro-level data.
The Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) is a panel survey of a representative sample of the 18 to 79-year-old population of every participating country. The GGS is planned with at least three successive waves with the interval of three years between waves. The GGS collects very detailed information on a wide range of social demographic topics which can be summarized in two words: generations and gender. On the hand, particular attention is given to relationships between grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren, including related topics like ageing and denatality, intergenerational assistance,… (‘Generations’). On the other hand, the many forms of relationships (marriage, cohabitation…), in current and previous relationships, as well as the typical gender themes such as the division of household tasks are analyzed (‘Gender’).
The second dimension of the Generations and Gender Programme is the contextual database. This database contains land-specific macro-level data, at national and regional level, that provide additional information to the GGS micro-data. This information can be used to include the influence of context factors (characteristics of policies, aggregated data…) in the analysis of the micro-level GGS data.