Survey Results 2022

What drives Swiss opinions on the role Switzerland should play in fighting global inequality?

Statistics on all survey questions and answer options are provided in the statistical annex. The results are disaggregated by gender, age, income, location, language, and political orientation. In addition, we analyzed two questions in more detail:
 

What drives Swiss opinions on the role Switzerland should play in fighting global inequality?

Opinions are divided on the role that Switzerland’s international cooperation should play in fighting global inequalities. For example: How much money should be spent on poverty reduction? What should Switzerland do to combat the global climate crisis? Which immigration policies do we want? What is less clear is where the fault lines run. Do they run between young and old, rich and poor, or women and men? Or is it the much-discussed urban-rural divide? Or is it because more than one-third of the population living in Switzerland has a migration background? There is one clear outcome: Against the much-debated role of people’s characteristics, we find that none of them plays a decisive role. The only significant factor consistently correlated with people’s position on global challenges and how policies should address them is their political leaning, which is informed by their values about how we should live together as societies.

Report 2022a: Download in German, English, French and Italian
 

Swiss public feels well-informed about global inequality, but would want to know more

The majority of the Swiss public feels well informed about global inequality, but almost half of the population still desires more information. Updating existing knowledge with information on global inequalities shifts attitudes towards global cooperation. For example, without being informed of the actual level of spending on foreign aid, 49% of respondents say spending on foreign aid should increase. When people are informed that Switzerland spends between 400 and 450 Swiss Francs on development cooperation, 65% support an increase of Swiss development cooperation, largely because most respondents overestimate the current level of Swiss development cooperation spending.

Report 2022b: Download in German, English, French and Italian