THE HUNGARIAN GENERATION AND GENDER SURVEY – TURNING POINTS OF LIFE COURSE PANEL SURVEY
The Turning Points of the Life Course (TPLC) panel survey is the Hungarian participant in the Generations and Gender Programme. TPLC is a follow-up survey, carried out by the Hungarian Demographic Research Institute between 2001 and 2017. It involved 16,363 respondents aged 18–75 at baseline, of whom 6,315 completed all five waves. The study was launched to document and analyse post-1990 demographic shifts in Hungary, such as declining fertility, delayed childbearing, the rise of unmarried cohabitation, as well as the social and economic context of these changes.
The survey combined retrospective and prospective data to capture past life course events and future intentions. It was guided by theories of economic crisis, the second demographic transition, and social anomie. The longitudinal design of the study enabled causal analyses of how structural conditions, values, and attitudes shape demographic behaviour, going beyond the limitations of cross-sectional surveys.
From the second wave onwards, the TPLC was incorporated into the international Generations and Gender Survey, adopting its core questionnaire while retaining country-specific modules. The use of a stratified sampling method, systematic respondent tracking, and a gradual shift from paper-based to computer-assisted interviewing ensured the high quality of the data. Despite attrition, panel stability remained comparatively strong, with nearly 40% of the initial sample retained after 15 years.
The English-language longitudinal database is freely available for research purposes. It contains around 7,000 variables relating to fertility, partnerships, households, work, education, income, health, ageing, values, and attitudes. The database is a valuable resource for studying life-course trajectories in Hungary, as well as for cross-national demographic research within the GGP framework.
Researchers
MAKAY, Zsuzsanna; MURINKÓ, Lívia; SPÉDER, Zsolt
Documentation
- Content summary table with variable names, waves 1–5
- Questionnaire, wave 1
- Questionnaire, wave 2
- Calendar, wave 2
- Questionnaire, wave 3
- Questionnaire, wave 4
- Questionnaire, wave 5
- Answer sheet booklet, wave 1
- Answer sheet booklet, wave 2
- Answer sheet booklet, wave 3
- Answer sheet booklet, wave 4
- Answer sheet booklet, wave 5
For background information on the study, feel free to download the following user guide: TPLC User Guide
Data access
The longitudinal dataset for the five waves of the TPLC is available via the Generations and Gender Programme (GGP) website (www.ggp-i.org) after registration and completion of the application form, along with the required supporting documents. Once the application has been approved, the requested data can be downloaded electronically in SPSS and Stata formats.
If you are not yet a registered GGP user, please follow the standard GGS data access procedure and select TPLC from the list of available datasets. Once your request has been approved, the dataset can be downloaded from the GGP Data Portal under “Additional Datasets”.
Acknowledgements
In any work emanating from this research, data users are asked to acknowledge the data source as follows:
Data source: Hungarian Demographic Research Institute (2025). Turning Points of the Life Course panel survey. GGP Data Archive, data file version 1.0.0 (2025). doi.org/10.21543/WP.2025.42
Project website: www.ggp-i.org
1st User Conference of the GGP: Demographic and Social Challenges in an Aging Europe HDRI – in cooperation with the Consortium Board of the Generations and Gender Programme and the Population Unit of the UNECE organized the 1st GGP User Conference. The theme of the conference was Demographic and Social Challenges in an Aging Europe.
23‐24 May 2011, Budapest, Hungary
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The conference aimed to bring together researchers working with the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) and the GGP Contextual Database from all across Europe, and invited them to present and discuss their most recent methodological approaches and empirical findings. The Conference also provided a forum for exchanges between existing and potential GGP users, policy makers and the research community.
Nearly 50 papers were presented in a total of 12 sessions. Presentations covered a wide range of substantive and methodological issues: fertility, partnership formation, intergenerational relationships, well-being and the division of labour. Most presentations compared several countries or used more waves of the survey.
Organizing committee:
Pearl Dykstra, Erasmus University, The Netherlands
Andrej Kveder, NIDI, Slovenia/The Netherlands
Ariane Pailhé, INED, France
Zsolt Spéder, HDRI, Hungary
The conference flyer and the programme can be downloaded from here.