Page 122 - IJPS-11-3

International Journal of
Population Studies Family policy from a global perspective

Figure 7. Perception of gendered income inequality. Note: Higher score: Stronger disagreement. Source: World Values Survey.

Compared to the previous question, fewer countries contrast, Asian and African societies tend to have the most
in the WVS implemented the following question: “How restrictive attitudes, with India exhibiting particularly
would you feel about the following statements? Do you conservative views on issues such as homosexuality,
agree or disagree with them? Homosexual couples are as abortion, and divorce.
good parents as other couples.” The 5-point scale has been Overall, in terms of geographic distribution, African
reversed to higher values expressing stronger agreement societies included in the WVS are less open to non-
and rescaled to values between 0 and 1. All three African traditional family forms than many countries in other
countries – Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe – exhibit the parts of the world. Asian societies tend to view sex before
lowest agreement scores (Figure 10). Several European marriage as less justifiable but score fairly high in their
countries also rank very low on the scale, such as Greece, view that homosexual couples can be good parents. This
Romania, Serbia, Russia, and Ukraine. Interestingly, perspective is not shared by countries in Southern and
societies with the highest scores are widely distributed Eastern Europe. However, European countries, along with
across continents: Puerto Rico, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and New Zealand, are the most tolerant societies
the USA, Australia, and Vietnam. regarding sex before marriage, as well as freedom of choice
Finally, Welzel’s sub-index CHOICE combines in terms of homosexuality, abortion, and divorce.
three items: homosexuality, abortion, and divorce, and
respondents were asked whether these actions can be 3.5. Societal attitudes toward demographic
justified or not. The degree of justifiability was given on a development and fertility
10-point scale between never and always and was rescaled In addition to using the VWS data to explore individual-
to values between 0 and 1. The composite index is displayed level attitudes, we assess the cultural climate related
in Figure 11. All the most tolerant societies are European to demographic development in countries around the
countries, together with New Zealand and Australia. In world. Population changes and fertility levels are carefully

Volume 11 Issue 3 (2025) 116 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.1993