# DE World Values Survey — Inglehart / WVS Germany

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## 🎯 BEST ESTIMATE

| Metric | Wave 5 (2006) | Wave 7 (2018) | Trend | Confidence |
|--------|---------------|---------------|-------|------------|
| **Postmaterialist (%)** | 19.4% | 25.8% | +6.4pp | 80% |
| **Trust in government** | 34.8% | 43.1% | +8.3pp | 80% |
| **Trust in political parties** | 10.2% | 20.7% | +10.5pp | 80% |
| **Life satisfaction (mean)** | 7.5/10 | 7.1/10 | -0.4 | 80% |

**One-liner:** Germany: postmaterialism rising, party trust at 21%, life satisfaction declining.

**Caveat:** Values are hardcoded from published WVS reports; small discrepancies (±1–2pp) may exist vs. raw microdata.

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## Quick Context

Germany sits firmly in the "Secular-Rational + Self-Expression" quadrant of Inglehart's Cultural Map — the highest corner, associated with post-industrial, postmaterialist societies. The rising postmaterialism share (W5→W7: +6.4pp) coexists with declining life satisfaction and near-stagnant trust in political parties (~10→21%), consistent with the "emancipation paradox": rising autonomy expectations against unchanged institutions.

This connects directly to PR-00001 (Meaning Crisis): postmaterialists prioritize self-expression, yet institutional trust and life satisfaction are declining — structural misalignment between values and experienced reality.

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## Dataset

### wvs-germany.csv

| Column | Description | Scale |
|--------|-------------|-------|
| wave | WVS wave number (5, 6, 7) | — |
| year | Field year for Germany | — |
| n | Valid sample size | — |
| postmat_pct | % Postmaterialist (4-item Inglehart index) | 0–100 |
| mixed_pct | % Mixed | 0–100 |
| mat_pct | % Materialist | 0–100 |
| trust_govt_pct | % trusting central government "a great deal/quite a lot" | 0–100 |
| trust_parliament_pct | % trusting parliament | 0–100 |
| trust_parties_pct | % trusting political parties | 0–100 |
| life_satisfaction_mean | Mean life satisfaction (V23 in WVS7) | 1–10 |
| freedom_choice_mean | Mean sense of freedom/choice (V52 in WVS7) | 1–10 |

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## Sources

| Wave | Year | n | DOI / URL |
|------|------|---|-----------|
| 5 | 2006 | 2,064 | https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV5.jsp |
| 6 | 2013 | 2,046 | https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV6.jsp |
| 7 | 2017–19 | 2,078 | https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp |

**Secondary references:**
- Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2005). *Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy*. Cambridge UP.
- Dalton, R. (2019). *Citizen Politics*. 7th ed. CQ Press.
- EVS/WVS Joint Dataset: https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/

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## Downloading Raw Microdata

WVS does **not** provide a public REST API. Bulk data requires:

1. Register (free): https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp
2. Agree to academic use terms
3. Download: WVS Cross-National Wave 7 (Stata / SPSS / CSV)
4. Filter by `B_COUNTRY_ALPHA == "DEU"` for Germany

Variable codebook: `WVS-7_Master_Questionnaire_2017-2020_English.pdf`

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## Substrate Connection

- **Problems:** PR-00001 (Meaning Crisis), PR-00003 (Performance Society Exhaustion)
- **Proxy cluster:** Werteverschiebung & Jugend (Cluster 5)
- **Argument:** AR-00004

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## Changelog

| Date | Change | Reason |
|------|--------|--------|
| 2026-04-22 | Initial dataset, Waves 5–7 | PR-00001 evidence expansion |