How have social attitudes changed in the UK over the last 40 years?

The 40th edition of the British social attitudes survey was published on Thursday.

Written by the National Center for Social Research (NatCen), it highlights how social, political and moral thinking has changed in Britain since the 1980s.

These are some of its main findings.

Society is much more liberal.

Attitudes toward many sexual and family issues have become surprisingly liberal.

In 1983, 50% of respondents said same-sex relationships were “always wrong”; now only 9% think like that.

Opinions on abortion have also changed markedly. Today, 76% say a woman should be legally allowed an abortion if she does not want to have a child, up from 37% in 1983.

“The vast social changes that Britain has witnessed over the past 40 years have been accompanied by a near revolution in attitudes towards many social and moral issues, including sexuality,” said lead researcher Sir John Curtice in comments posted on the site NatCen website.

However, some things contradict this liberal trend, such as attitudes towards transgender people.

Only 30% of Brits believe someone should be able to change their sex if they wish, down from 53% in 2019.

That sudden decline is accompanied by an increase in discrimination and violence against the transgender community in Britain. According to LGBT+ charity Stonewall, two out of five trans people have experienced a hate crime or incident due to their gender identity in the last 12 months.

Increased support for state action

Opinions about the role of the state appear to be changing.

Almost twice as many Britons (55%) now believe the state should raise taxes and spend more on health, education and social benefits compared to the 1980s (32%).

“The pandemic and the cost of living crisis appear to have left the public considerably more inclined than at some times in the past to turn to the government to solve the problems they and the country face,” Curtice said.

However, independent NatCen researchers said attitudes towards state action followed “a cyclical pattern” over the decades.

In 1998, 63% of people wanted higher taxes and spending, but by 2010 it had fallen again to just 31%.

At the same time, the proportion of people who say it is the government’s responsibility to keep prices under control now stands at 68%.

Millions of people in Britain have had to cut back or skip meals amid a savage cost of living crisis, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported in June.

He attributed this trend to Rampant food price inflation and little state support that have forced 7 million households to make “impossible choices” between food, heating or basic toiletries.

Greater acceptance of non-traditional families

Apparently, the British are now accepting more family structures beyond the traditional nuclear deal.

Half of those surveyed agree that one parent can raise a child as well as two parents (up from 35% who said the same in 1994).

Meanwhile, only 24% of Britons believe that people who want to have children should get married, down from 70% in 1989.

These attitudes have changed as Britain has seen a rise in the number of non-traditional families.

While data on so-called “sexual minority families” is limited, Britain’s Office for National Statistics recorded 212,000 same-sex families in the United Kingdom in 2019, a 40% increase since 2015.

Several factors are behind this, including more progressive laws and advances in fertility treatments.

Yo-yo attitudes toward welfare poverty

The survey found that Britons are more or less generously disposed towards those living in poverty.

During the 2000s, the era of Tony Blair’s centrist New Labour, attitudes towards welfare became less generous, but have since turned around again.

In 1989, 61% of those surveyed by NatCen thought that “the government should spend more on welfare benefits for the poor, even if it means higher taxes.” That figure fell to just 27% in 2009, but is now 37%.

“Although they have fluctuated up and down in response to changing political and economic circumstances, attitudes toward inequality and the economic role of the state are still not that different from those of forty years ago,” Curtice said.

“The debate on these issues still sounds familiar.”

Class still matters

This year’s report showed that Britons were just as likely to see themselves as middle or working class as they were 40 years ago.

They also firmly believe that a person’s economic and cultural wealth determines their future.

In the latest survey, up to 77% say social class affects someone’s opportunities in Britain “a lot” or “quite a bit”. This figure is slightly higher than the 70% who thought the same in 1983 and the 66% who did so in 1985.

Britons are also much less likely than before to see an opportunity to move up the ladder.

A third of those surveyed now think it is very difficult to move from one class to another – almost double the proportion (17%) who thought the same in 2005.

Social mobility in Britain has declined since the Conservative government came to power in 2010.

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies in September found that there has been a surprising collapse in social mobility, with people growing up in the north of England and those from ethnic minorities finding it much harder than others to become richer.

Young voters lean left

The survey also explored the relationship between age and voting patterns.

In 2022, the center-left Labor Party was the most popular political party among those under 35, while the Conservatives are favored by those over 55.

This age gap, which has doubled since 2015, barely existed in the 1980s, NatCen wrote.

However, although the Labor Party has historically been associated with greater state intervention, young people are in fact less likely than older people to say that taxes and spending on “health, education and social benefits” should be increased. .

In the latest poll, only 43% of those under 35 support that view, compared to 67% of those over 55.

Young people may have “noticed how, in an aging society, public spending has increasingly focused on the needs of the elderly, perhaps most vividly illustrated by the rising cost of college tuition.” , while old-age pensions have been treated generously,” he said. Curtice.

“As a result, their concern about inequality is not accompanied by greater support for more spending.”