Indians More Confident About Economy, Future Than Americans: Study 

A decade after the worst financial crisis in history, economies have recovered, and the public mood has rebounded, especially in some of the hardest hit economies, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 27 major and growing markets.

While people in emerging markets of India, Philippines, and Indonesia are confident about their children being financially better in future and their economies doing good, their counterparts in western countries think the coming generation will be not be as lucky as their parents, even though their economies are doing good, according to the study.

In 2018, 56 percent of Indians said their economy is doing good now while 66 percent said their children will be better off financially. However, in 2017, 83 percent of Indians were upbeat about their economy, marking a 27 drop now. Despite this decline, more than half of India’s public still voices a positive assessment of their economy, the report showed.

Among emerging markets, this sentiment is echoed by people in Brazil, Tunisia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa. On the other hand, in advanced economies, only Italians, Russians, South Koreans, Greeks, and Argentinians were confident about their children would be financially better in future.

The change in people’s economic mood has been dramatic in some nations, the report said. In 2018, nearly eight people in 10 in Germany (78%) said economic conditions in their country are good, up 50 percent from 2009. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) are also upbeat about their economy, with their assessment up 48 points. And the economic mood has improved 40 points in Poland, 35 points in the United Kingdom, 34 points in Japan, and 24 points in Kenya since the depth of the Great Recession.

Only 32 percent Americans said that their children will be happy economically, a drop of -32 percent from last year.

More positive public feelings about the current economy have not erased concern about the future, however. In 18 of the 27 nations surveyed, half or more of the public (including 80% of the French, 76% of the Japanese and 72% of the Spanish) believes that when children today in their country grow up they will be worse off financially than their parents. In previous surveys by Pew Research Center, such worries were mostly confined to advanced economies, but now people in emerging markets increasingly express concerns about the financial well-being of the next generation.

In most of the nations surveyed, economic confidence has gone up over the past year, with public optimism similarly pronounced in 2017 and 2018. Some exceptions between 2017 and 2018 include significant upward swings in economic confidence in France (up 22 points) and South Korea (up 16 points).

In almost all the countries that were surveyed, there’s widespread nostalgia about the economy. In roughly half the countries surveyed, a majority of the people said the financial situation of average people today is worse, compared with the pre-crisis era 20 years ago. This includes 87 percent of Greeks, 75 percent of Tunisians and 72 percent of Italians.