Since the early 1970s the European Commission´s Standard & Special Eurobarometer are regularly monitoring the public opinion in the European Union member countries. Principal investigators are the Directorate-General Communication and on occasion other departments of the European Commission or the European Parliament. Over time, candidate and accession countries were included in the Standard Eurobarometer Series. Selected questions or modules may not have been surveyed in each sample. Please consult the basic questionnaire for more information on country filter instructions or other questionnaire routing filters. In this study the following modules are included: 1. Poverty and social exclusion, 2. Mobile phone use in other EU countries, 3. Financial and economic crisis, 4. International trade.
Topics: 1. Poverty and social exclusion: own life satisfaction (scale); satisfaction with family life, health, job satisfaction and satisfaction with standard of living (scale); personal definition of being poor; estimated spread of poverty in the own country; estimated proportion of poor in the total population; people who live in poverty in the own residential area; estimated increase of poverty: in the living area, in the own country, in the EU and in the world; reasons for poverty in general; social and individual causes of poverty; population group with the highest risk of poverty; absolutely neccessary long-lived assets for a minimum acceptable standard of living (heating facility, adequate housing, plenty of room to life and privacy, varied meals, repair or replacement of a refrigerator, an annual family vacation, medical care, dental care, access to banking services as well as to public transport, access to modern means of communication, to leisure and cultural events, electricity, gas and tap water); perceived impairments (deprivation) caused by poverty in the own country: access to decent housing, education, health care, regular meals, bank service, modern means of communication to the labor market, maintaining a network of friends and acquaintances, as well as the chance to start the own business; assessment of the financial situation and level of future generations compared to parents’ and grandparents’ generation; attitude towards poverty: the need for action by the government, too large income differences, duty of the government for the fair redistribution of wealth, more taxes for the rich, automatic reduction of poverty through economic growth, poverty will always exist, income inequality is necessary for economic development; perceived conflict groups: rich and poor, employers and workers, young and old, different racial and ethnic groups; general trust in people and trust in the parliament and the government (scale); trust in institutions in poverty reduction: EU, national government, local authorities, NGOs, religious institutions, private companies, citizens; causes of poverty in the own country: globalisation, low economic growth, profit motive, global financial system, politics, immigration, poor social system; primarily responsible for poverty reduction; importance of the role of the EU in combating poverty; prioritized policies of the state government to combat poverty; assessment of the effectiveness of public policies to reduce poverty; opinion on the extent of financial support for the poor; preference for state or private provision of jobs; attitude towards education fees; controlling for social spending; individual responsibility or responsibility of the government (welfare state) for the supply of citizens; attitude towards the minimum wage; optimistic about the future vs. personally perceived social exclusion; perceived difficulties to get access to financial services: bank account, bank card, credit card, consumer loans and a mortgage; personal risk of over-indebtedness; attitude towards loans: easy access to interest free loans for the poor, stronger verification of borrowers by credit institutions, easier access to start-up loans for unemployed, free financial advice for the poor, possibility for every individual to open a basic bank account; affordable housing in the residential environment; extent of homelessness in the residential environment and its recent change; reasonableness of the expenditure for the homeless by the national government and the local authorities; assumed reasons for homelessness: unemployment, no affordable housing, destruction of the living space by a natural disaster, indebtedness, illness, addiction to drugs or alcohol, family breakdown, loss of a close relative, mental health problems, lack of access to social services and support facilities, and lack of identification papers or free choice of this life; probability of own homelessness; personal charity actions to support poor people: monetary donations to charities, volunteer work in charities, help with recording in emergency shelters and with job search, giving clothes to poor people, buying...