YouGov-Cambridge surveys shows majorities in Germany, UK and US remain pessimistic about economic future and personally hit by slump
Clear majorities across the western world claim to have been personally affected by the economic slump that most citizens expect to drag down living standards for decades to come, according to YouGov-Cambridge.
The academic polling thinktank found 57% of Britons, 64% of Americans and 54% of Germans had been personally affected by the economic problems of their countries during the last five years to a "great" or "fair" extent. The French, whom happiness researchers routinely find are given to accentuating the negative, are gloomier – 80% of them claim to be feeling the pinch personally.
More shocking than the reporting of present penury is abject pessimism that sets in when YouGov-Cambridge's questioning turned to the future. Respondents were asked whether, despite the recession, they were "basically confident that our children's generation will end up enjoying a better standard of living than our generation, just as our generation has mostly been better off than our parents", the reassuring rider reminding them that – whatever the ups and downs of the cycle – the slow miracle of economic growth has eventually touched most family's lives, by roughly doubling the size of the world's big economies every 30 years. But even after this prompt, 19% of Britons, 15% of Americans, 16% of Germans and 17% of the French agree with this statement. Instead, overwhelming respective majorities of 64%, 65%, 66% and 59% incline to the view that "the younger generation will find it harder than ours to enjoy a reasonable standard of living".
Within the British economy particularly, there is evidence that recent personal experience is feeding through into a dismal view of distant future horizons. Only 15% of those who have suffered materially from the recession incline to the view that the rising generation will end up better-off in the end, compared to 27% – nearly twice as many – of those who have escaped the big squeeze. In the other economies, the link between personal experience and expectations for the distant future are far more muted, suggesting that the recession may be exerting a particularly divisive effect on British psychology.
A separate series of questions on the opportunities available to young people also suggested that recession-hit Britons are becoming gloomier in a distinctive way. The 57% of Britons, for example, who believe that "whereever you start in life, enough hard work will bring you success", is very much in line with the 61% of French respondents who say the same, but in Britain the recession-hit are considerably less-likely, by some 14 points, to take this cheery view than those who are not feeling the personal squeeze, whereas in France personal experience makes no substantial difference.
In Britain alone, YouGov asked a near-identical question in August 2012, and at that point 59% feared that the younger generation would find it harder, as against just 23% who then feared that the young would find it tougher to achieve a reasonable standard of living over the course of their lives. The 64%-19% split of British opinion in favour of pessimism today represents a four and a half point swing towards gloom since mid-2012, a likely response to the run of mostly negative economic news over the last 20 months.