Economical

Czech citizen's awareness of membership of the Czech Republic in WTO is relatively low. Only one third (32 %) of polled people answered correctly that the Czech Republic is a member of WTO, 4 % gave an incorrect answer and 64 % admitted that they don't know. Opinion of Czech public on WTO's influence in economic development of the Czech Republic is rather positive (21 %) or neutral (27 %) than negative.

Citizens of Czech Republic are most positive about current economical situation of their country. 28 % of Czechs suppose current economical situation of Czech Republic to be good, 27 % of people consider it to be bad and 44 % of Czech citizens characterize current economical situation as "neither good nor bad". In other countries critical opinions prevail positive opinions, when Poles evaluate current economical situation of their country most positively, Hungarians are less positive and Slovaks are the least positive.

November survey embraced questions about public opinions on reasons why some people live in poverty in Czech Republic. Respondents had to choose among statements about people living in poverty and say which statement is true.

The statement “some people live in poverty, because they lost their jobs“ was supported by more than two thirds of respondents. Same number of respondents think that some people live in poverty, because they do not want to work.

Nine out of ten citizens of Czech Republic would support salary provided by state for people, who look after old or handicapped family members in their own household. 84% of respondents think, that state should give financial support to enterprises, which make new vacancies. Seven out of 10 Czechs agree with no support for unemployed people, who would refuse to accept less-paid job. Respondents were mostly against charge for seeing a doctor and distribution of medicine, this reform would not be supported by more than three quarters of Czech citizens.

When considering fairness of some principles connected with income differences, people most positively evaluated income differences, which come from labour efficiency, difficulty or laboriousness of job and acquired qualification. On contrary equality of income is supposed to be the least equitable principle. The most of Czech society (72 %) share an opinion that state should struggle to lower differences between poor and rich people, 21 % of Czechs share opposite opinion.

In November 2005, 36 % of respondents characterised the living standard of their household to be good, 19 % share the opposite opinion and 45 % of respondents described it as neither good nor bad. 7 % of citizens indicated their household to be rich, whilst 23 % consider it to be poor. More than two thirds of respondents (69 %) regard their household as neither rich nor poor. Problems with current budget of their household were stated by 53 % of respondents, on the other hand 43 % said they have no problems to manage with income of the household.

State expenditures on social policy in general and in its partial areas are always supposed to be low than high. The exception is unemployment benefit, where number of those who think this benefit is low (36 %) did not outbalance the number ot those who consider it to be appropriate (38 %), the most frequent answer was that state expenditures are low in this area. With the exception of expenditures on unemployment benefit, employment policy and a guarantee of living wage - the number of those (who suppose state expenditures on social policy to be low) was about 49 - 55 %.

In October survey CVVM questioned economically active respondents, how satisfied they are with some aspects of job.People are most satisfied with their interesting job,time spent in work,working in shifts when more than three quarters of economically active respondents are satisfied with these aspects of job.Approximately three quarters of working people are also satisfied with using their professional skills at workplace and with relations in the workplace.

Almost a half of Czech citizens think that most of unemployed people can not get suitable job.Almost a quarter of czech citizens share an opinion that unemployed people do not want to work and a fifth of responents think that unemployed people can not get any job.Czech people regard current situation of unemployment as very high.6 out of 10 respondents stated that they would look for concrete job in case they were unemployed, on contrary almost 4 out of 10 said they would look for any job.

In October 2005 CVVM also focused on economic situation of czech

households.More than a half of respondents(56%)stated they have hardly

enough money for household. 40% of citizens said that they have enough

money for household. Almost two thirds of people suppose their household

to be neither rich nor poor.During last year a third of

respondents´households had financial problems.

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