Germany

Views of the U.S. are favorable across many of the 33 countries we surveyed in 2019, although confidence in U.S. President Donald Trump is low.

Despite parents' shifting responsibilities, the U.S. is the only one of 41 nations that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents.

In EU countries with higher unemployment, people are more pessimistic about job prospects. Youth unemployment and lack of economic growth are also factors.

Negative views of China predominate in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. China also receives unfavorable marks from many neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region.

Most live in Germany, the UK, Italy and France, and about half had arrived in Europe in recent years. Overall, these migrants account for less than 1% of Europe’s total population.

An estimated 1.0 million to 1.2 million unauthorized immigrants lived in Germany in 2017, up from 500,000 to 600,000 in 2014, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on the latest available data.

Despite improvements in recent decades, the former East Germany trails the former West on several important economic measures.

Worldwide, most of the countries that allow gay marriage are in Western Europe. In the Americas, five countries have legalized gay marriage.

Despite broadly positive sentiments among Germans about the changes of the past 30 years, views differ in some notable ways in the former West and East.

Americans and Western Europeans largely agree about what is important for democracy, but they put greater emphasis on these principles than Central and Eastern Europeans.