Introduction to the Data Report

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The Current Data Report	Archive
Data Report 2006	Data Report 2004
	Data Report 2002
	Data Report 1999

The Data Report presents results from official statistics and empirical social research. It is a biannual social report that had been published for the first time in 1983.  Since then it provides a comprehensive review of the economic and social situation in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Data Report is edited by the Federal Statistical Office (DESTATIS) in cooperation with the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and the former Centre for Survey Research and Methodology (ZUMA) in Mannheim.

The cooperation between official statistics and scientific social reporting results from their specific division of labour, which is reflected by a bipartition of the Data Report. While the first part describes the actual living conditions and their changes over time using data of official statistics, the second part describes and analyses welfare development based on specific social science data. In particular these data include information on the citizens' subjective perceptions and evaluations of the objective living conditions they encounter.

The first part of the Data Report "Society, Economy, and the State from a statistical perspective" is structured in such a way that it meets two different demands: it covers the important aspects of living conditions, among which are education, employment, housing, health and leisure, but at the same time it also reflects the organisational structure of official statistics. There is also a special section on international comparisons. In this section selected demographic, social and economic data on the Federal Republic of Germany are compared to those of other EU-member states as well as to those of potential candidate countries for EU-accession. 

The information compiled in the first part of the Data Report are not derived from a single, special survey, but rather represent a specific selection of the entire data holdings of official statistics.

The second part of the Data Report extends the information supplied by official statistics with a non-official, scientific perspective on social reporting. This part of the report not only draws upon specific social science data, it is also to a much greater extent structured by theoretical concepts of the social sciences.

In contrast to social reporting based on official statistics, which is limited to objective living conditions and to characteristics of demographic, economic and social structures, the second part of the Data Report focuses on the subjective components of welfare. In addition to that it also emphasises the correlations and the discrepancies between objective living conditions and their subjective perception and evaluation. The contributions included in the second part intend to describe and to analyse the respondents' general situation as well as their attitudes, expectations, value orientation and, last but not least their subjective well-being. The latter was operationalized by using variables on satisfaction and happiness, but also on feelings of loneliness, anxiety and alienation. Just like in the first segment, the contents of the the Data Report's second part are again structured by life domains. This ensures that both parts of the report correspond to as well as supplement each other. In addition some contributions focus on issues that are of importance in the context of several life domains. Examples for this are the discussion of subjective well-being and investigations of the situation of particular subgroups of the population. The focus of the report however is also in the second part on presenting time series data and on analysing the changes in living conditions and subjective well-being that occur over time.

The second part of the Data Report jointly produced by the Social Structure and Social Reporting Unit of the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and by former GESIS-ZUMA's Social Indicators Research Centre. The editors of the Data Report are Roland Habich (Wissenschaftzentrum Berlin) and Heinz-Herbert Noll (GESIS-ZUMA). The Data Report 2006 is available from the Federal Centre for Political Education (Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, Adenauerallee 86, 53113 Bonn, Tel.: +49 (0)1888 - 515-0, E-Mail: info[at]bpb.de). It is also possible to order single copies from GESIS-ZUMA.