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We examine the relationship between gender equality and fertility ideals, focusing on the role of societal norms about men’s participation in care and household work, known as the second half of the gender revolution. We set out to capture how the prevalence of this revolution translates into fertility ideals on the societal level and among different social groups. Data come from the ISSP module 2012, covering 26 societies. The first objective is to examine the relationship between gender equality norms and fertility ideals across national contexts. The second objective is to compare how measures of gender equality focusing on the first half of the gender revolution, and the second half, respectively, are associated with fertility ideals. As previous research focusing on the first half of the gender revolution noted and/or predicted that actual or intended fertility tends to be comparatively lower among women, the highly educated, younger generations, and the non-religious, our third objective is to analyse the extent to which norms embracing the second half have the capacity to modify these relationships. The results show that norms about gender equality are positively related to fertility ideals and seem to influence patterns of fertility ideals among social groups. In societies with strong gender equality norms, women, the highly educated, and the young display comparatively higher fertility ideals. In societies with weak gender equality norms, these patterns are reversed. Differences depending on gender equality norm measures were small but systematically in favour of those capturing the second half of the gender revolution.

The emerging comparative research field on public attitudes toward education policy has devoted little attention to private education and market governance of education systems. This chapter takes an initial step in filling this void by examining public opinion across 41 countries, primarily using data from the International Social Survey Programme. While the results show that a substantial proportion of people believe that private schools should have a role in the education system, the vast majority in most countries still prefer that the government should be the primary provider of school education. Moreover, we find relatively strong public agreement in most countries that it is unjust for those with higher incomes to purchase better education. However, consistent with policy feedback theory and previous case studies indicating that public education is inadequate and unable to meet the increasing demand for high-quality education in many developing countries, we find that countries characterized by less universal access to education tend to display greater popular support for private education. To gain further insights and draw more general inferences regarding these matters, we conclude that extending comparative studies to lower-income countries of the Global South is an urgent task for future research.

This short note introduces the second special issue focusing on the analysis of comparative data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) Social Inequality (SI) module. In addition to expressing our appreciation for our colleagues on the drafting group for sharing their time and expertise to shape the content of the 2019 module, we provide a summary of the three empirical articles featured in this second special issue. These articles represent a further contribution to our understanding of inequality beliefs more than three decades since the first ISSP SI module was fielded in the late 1980s. In conclusion, we encourage the global research community to make extensive use of the 2019 ISSP SI module data to further explore the dynamics of inequality beliefs and socioeconomic conditions worldwide.

Using attitude data from the ISSP 2012, we study the prevalence of the second half of the gender revolution – the involvement of men/fathers in care and housework on equal terms as women/mothers. With a focus on the collective consciousness in 27 societies, we (1) map patterns of support for different family model ideals; (2) study the extent to which these ideals are related to national level indicators of gender equality and modernization; (3) analyse similarities and differences between groups of societies, focusing on which ideals that represent conservative and progressive alternatives in each society; (4) analyse group differences and the degree to which these ideals are contested within societies. We find that the ideal of a father as provider and a mother as caregiver persists, but in nearly all societies, it is challenged by other alternatives: mothers’ part-time work, full-time work for both mothers and fathers, and a dual-earner/dual-carer ideal, with shared responsibilities for paid (part-time) and unpaid work. On the societal level, modernization and gender equality are positively associated with both progressive family ideals and marked group differences, indicating that fathers’ involvement in the family is a contested issue in progressive societies.

Coinciding with a trend of rising economic divides within many countries, scholarly interest in the subject of inequality has grown significantly in the twenty first century. Since its creation in 1987, the Social Inequality module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) has evolved into an exceptionally comprehensive country-comparative individual-level database on public beliefs about inequality and socioeconomic conditions. The module stands out among international surveys due to its extensive thematic depth and breadth, along with the long timespan it covers. This provides unique opportunities for charting and monitoring longitudinal trends in social inequality, as well as for conducting comparative analyses aimed at advancing theories that incorporate the national context as an integral part of the explanatory framework. This article describes the content, coverage, and history of the fifth wave of the Social Inequality module (2019). This survey wave was conducted in 34 countries and combines previously fielded topics with new ones that speak to current debates in different areas of inequality research. The fifth wave introduces new questions focusing on anger and unfairness, reducing inequality by market actors, government inefficacy, lived experience of inequality, economic insecurity and deprivation, and social trust.

This article elaborates on previous research showing that educational achievement is negatively related to poor mental health during adolescence and positively related to the family’s socioeconomic resources. We examine (i) the potential moderating effects of family resources on the negative relationship between educational achievement and poor mental health and (ii) the impact of resources linked to the mother and father, respectively, on educational achievements. We use register data that cover all children born in Sweden in 1990 who still lived there in 2010 (n = 115,882). We use two dependent variables – upper secondary school graduation and grade point average (GPA) – and analyse the performance of girls and boys separately. Our results indicate that the impact of mothers’ socioeconomic resources on children’s school performance is stronger overall than that of fathers’ resources. The compensatory effects of family socioeconomic resources on the risk of failure to graduate are more pronounced amongst girls than boys. With regard to GPA, compensatory effects are largely absent.

The Role of Government (ROG) module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a unique high-quality data source for comparative research on political attitudes and orientations. This article describes the content, coverage, and history of the ISSP 2016 ROG module, which was fielded in 35 countries. The module has been fielded five times since its inception in 1985, and a majority of the items in the 2016 module are replicated from previous waves to facilitate comparisons over time. In addition, a substantial number of new items are included to cover pertinent issues not previously addressed by the ISSP. Topics include (but are not restricted to) civil liberties; national security and challenges; state intervention in the economy; government taxation, spending, redistribution, and responsibilities; political trust and efficacy; corruption and institutional trust; and government responsiveness. This new wave of the module gauges political opinion at a moment in history characterized by substantial political turmoil and change in many countries. At the same time, this fifth wave strengthens the analytical capacity of the module for charting longitudinal developments both within and across countries. Overall, this makes the ISSP ROG module an attractive platform for asking new questions that can further the mutual development of theory and empirical analysis in comparative research.

Research has established that school performance relates: (i) negatively with poor mental health during childhood and (ii) positively with family socioeconomic resources. In this article, we examine the potentially moderating effects of family resources on the relationship between school performance and poor mental health, using register data covering all children born in Sweden in 1990. The dependent variable is graduation from upper secondary school. We perform separate analyses for girls and boys. Our results indicate that compensatory effects of the socioeconomic resources of the family on the risk of graduation failure.