Files
Substrate/Data/DE-World-Values/DE-World-Values.md
svemagie 34c99ec7a9 fix: rename 6 DE datasets README.md→{Name}.md + add 7 missing source catalogs
Renames (consistent naming convention):
- DE-Church-Exits, DE-Mental-Health, DE-Social-Isolation,
  DE-Wastewater-Surveillance, DE-Wellbeing, DE-World-Values

New source catalog entries (DS-00021 through DS-00027):
- Church Exits (EKD/DBK), Common Metrics (Destatis/Bundesbank/BA/ZEW),
  Democracy Metrics (V-Dem/RSF/ALLBUS), Mental Health (Gallup/Destatis/DAK),
  Social Isolation (Genesis/Einsamkeitsstudie), Wellbeing (Eurostat EHIS),
  World Values (WVS/EVS)

All 16 DE datasets + 1 EU dataset now have consistent naming and source catalogs.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-23 12:05:57 +02:00

3.3 KiB
Raw Permalink Blame History

DE World Values Survey — Inglehart / WVS Germany


🎯 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 (±12pp) may exist vs. raw microdata.


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.


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) 0100
mixed_pct % Mixed 0100
mat_pct % Materialist 0100
trust_govt_pct % trusting central government "a great deal/quite a lot" 0100
trust_parliament_pct % trusting parliament 0100
trust_parties_pct % trusting political parties 0100
life_satisfaction_mean Mean life satisfaction (V23 in WVS7) 110
freedom_choice_mean Mean sense of freedom/choice (V52 in WVS7) 110

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 201719 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/

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


Substrate Connection

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

Changelog

Date Change Reason
2026-04-22 Initial dataset, Waves 57 PR-00001 evidence expansion