As the global economy shows signs of rebounding, positive assessments of the economic situation have risen in several major advanced economies since last year. Positive views of the economy have sharply increased in countries like Australia and the United Kingdom. Yet, many in Spain, Italy, Japan, France, Greece, South Korea and the United States continue to see their overall economic situation as bleak.

Despite an uptick in some places, many say that children will be worse off financially than their parents, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted this spring in 16 publics and in the U.S. this past February.

Across the 17 publics, a median of 64% say that when children grow up, they will be worse off financially, while about a third (32%) say that children will be better off than their parents’ generation. Only in Singapore and Sweden do half or more hold this optimistic view.

In the U.S., fully 68% think children will be worse off than their parents. The most pessimistic publics surveyed are France and Japan, where 77% say children will be worse off. 

The survey also finds that people who say the coronavirus crisis has been mishandled by their government and those who say the economy is failing to recover in ways that show the weaknesses of their economy are more likely to say that the current economic situation is bad and that children will be worse off financially than their parents.

These are among the findings of a new Pew Research Center survey, conducted from Feb. 1 to May 26, 2021, among 18,850 adults in 17 advanced economies.

Accompanying this report is an interactive analysis of the economic status of households around the world: “Are you in the global middle class? Find out with our income calculator.”

Views of the economy vary internationally

Overall views on whether the national economic situation is good or not vary greatly across the 17 publics surveyed. A median of 52% say that the current economic situation is bad, while a similar share (47%) say it is good.

Majorities assess the economy positively in northern European countries such as Sweden (86%), the Netherlands (69%) and Germany (60%) as well as in Singapore (69%) and Taiwan (56%). About three-quarters of those in Australia and New Zealand, where COVID-19 cases have remained relatively low, say the economy is good. (Note: This data was collected before recent lockdowns in Australia to curtail the spread of the coronavirus’ Delta variant.)

But eight-in-ten or more in Spain, Italy and Japan say the economic situation is bad in their country, as do seven-in-ten or more Greeks, French, South Koreans and Americans.

In Belgium, the UK and Canada, views on the national economy are nearly evenly split, with slightly higher percentages saying that the economy is bad. 

Among many publics, views of the national economy are more positive this year than last year. Positive assessments of the economy have risen the most in Australia, where 74% now say the economic situation is good, compared with only 36% in 2020. Positive views also rose in Sweden and the Netherlands, but even in 2020, majorities in these two countries still said the economy was good. 

Despite the global economic downturn the coronavirus pandemic has wrought, views of the national economy are as positive as they have been since surveying began in Sweden in 2007 and Australia in 2008 – two countries that initially took very different approaches in dealing with the coronavirus outbreak.

While overall attitudes have grown more positive over the past year, the shares who say the economy is good have not recovered from their pre-pandemic highs in many countries. For instance, positive assessments of the economy in Canada rose 11 percentage points over the past year, from 38% to 49%. But in 2019, prior to the coronavirus outbreak, 72% had said the economy was good.

In most publics surveyed, women are more likely than men to say the economic situation is bad. But, in most of the 17 publics surveyed, there are no significant differences in economic outlook when it comes to age or education.

In most publics surveyed, those who support the governing party or ruling coalition are more likely to say the economy is good compared with those who do not support the governing party. While the U.S. portion of this survey was conducted immediately following the inauguration of President Joe Biden, a more recent U.S. survey has found a similar relationship between partisanship and views of the economy among Americans as well.

In most of the publics surveyed, views on the economy are related to respondent assessments of their government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Those who think the outbreak has been dealt with well are more likely to say the economy is good. This is particularly the case in Germany and Canada, where those who say the outbreak has been handled well in their country are 38 percentage points more likely to say the economy is good compared with those who say the outbreak was handled poorly.

Especially when it comes to economic recovery in the wake of the pandemic, the survey finds that views vary widely, with a majority in the U.S., Japan and much of Europe critiquing their economic system’s durability. And skepticism of the state of recovery has colored views of the current economic situation. In all publics surveyed, those who say their national economy is recovering from the effects of the coronavirus in ways that show the strength of their economic system are far more likely to say the economy is currently good than those who point to their economy’s weaknesses.

And in 11 of the publics surveyed, those who say the coronavirus pandemic has changed their life not too much or not at all are more likely to rate the economy positively than those who say their life has changed a lot or somewhat.

Large shares are pessimistic about their children’s financial future

The coronavirus pandemic has been predicted to have wide-sweeping effects on the future of children around the world, particularly when it comes to education and economic outcomes. When respondents in 17 publics were asked how they think children will fare when they grow up, the prevailing view is that children will be financially worse off than their parents. More than two-thirds say this in France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the U.S. and Canada.

A median of roughly a third (32%) say children will grow up to be better off than their parents where they live, with respondents in Singapore (61%) and Sweden (50%) standing out as particularly optimistic.

In some places, pessimism has markedly increased since before the COVID-19 outbreak, while in others, it has tempered. Respondents in Italy, the U.S., Germany, South Korea and Greece are now more pessimistic than they were in spring 2019, with Americans and South Koreans more pessimistic now than in any other year when the question was asked. However, respondents in the UK, Sweden, Australia and the Netherlands are more positive on their kids’ prospects now than in 2019. In fact, pessimism for their children’s future in Sweden and the UK is at its lowest point since the Center began asking this question in each country.

In the U.S., respondents of all political leanings are broadly pessimistic about the future of children, with views among conservative Republicans changing dramatically over the past year. In March 2020, 36% of conservative Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said children in the U.S. would be worse off than their parents. About three-quarters (76%) say so now, a 40-point increase.

When it comes to expectations for children’s futures among the publics surveyed, there are few consistent differences by age, education, income or ideology. In a handful of locales, women are more pessimistic than men, with the largest such difference in Belgium (75% of women vs. 61% of men say their country’s children will be worse off).

Those who say the current state of their economy is generally bad are far more likely to believe their children will be worse off in the future. In all publics surveyed, there are double-digit differences in pessimism between those who say their economy is good and those who say it is bad. In Taiwan, the difference is 42 points – 85% of those who think their economy is bad also think their children will be worse off, while 43% of those with positive views of their economy say their children will be worse off.   

The survey finds that respondents tended to give high praise to the coronavirus response where they live, especially in the Asia-Pacific. But praise for the COVID-19 response is not uniform, and those who say the response has been bad are far more pessimistic about children’s futures there. There are large differences in both Greece and South Korea, where majorities approve of their local pandemic response, as well as in Japan and Spain, where majorities say their country has done a bad job dealing with the outbreak.

In a handful of publics surveyed, those who say their own life changed due to the pandemic (either a great deal or a fair amount) are more likely to say their children will be worse off. In Taiwan, roughly seven-in-ten of those whose lives were affected in this way are pessimistic, while just half of those whose lives did not change say the same. There are similar divides in the UK, South Korea, Canada and Australia.

Dissatisfaction with their economy’s recovery from the pandemic has also fed into respondents’ pessimism for the future. In nearly all publics surveyed, those who say their economy is failing to recover from the pandemic in ways that show weaknesses of their system are far more likely to say their children will be worse off than their parents. There are differences of 30 points or more on this issue in Greece, Canada and South Korea when compared with those who say the recovery has been a demonstration of economic strength.

This report is a collaborative effort based on the input and analysis of the following individuals.

Shannon Schumacher, Research Associate
J.J. Moncus, Research Assistant

James Bell, Vice President, Global Strategy
Alexandra Castillo, Research Methodologist
Aidan Connaughton, Research Assistant
Stefan S. Cornibert, Communications Manager       
Claudia Deane, Vice President, Research    
Kat Devlin, Research Associate
Moira Fagan, Research Analyst
Janell Fetterolf, Senior Researcher
Shannon Greenwood, Digital Producer
Sneha Gubbala, Research Assistant
Christine Huang, Research Analyst
Michael Keegan, Senior Information Graphics Designer
David Kent, Senior Copy Editor
Gar Meng Leong, Communications Associate
Clark Letterman, Senior Survey Manager
Gracie Martinez, Senior Administrative Coordinator
Mara Mordecai, Research Analyst
Patrick Moynihan, Associate Director, International Research Methods
Julia O’Hanlon, Communications Associate
Jacob Poushter, Associate Director, Global Attitudes Research
Laura Silver, Senior Researcher
Richard Wike, Director, Global Attitudes Research

For this report, we grouped people into two political categories: those who support the governing political party (or parties) and those who do not. These categories were coded based on the party or parties in power at the time the survey was fielded, and on respondents’ answers to a question asking them which political party, if any, they identified with in their survey public.¹

In publics where multiple political parties govern in coalition (as in many European countries), survey respondents who indicated support for any parties in the coalition were grouped together. In Germany, for example, where the center-right CDU/CSU governed with the center-left SPD at the time of the survey, supporters of all three parties were grouped together. In publics where different political parties occupy the executive and legislative branches of government, the party holding the executive branch was considered the governing party.

Survey respondents who did not indicate support for any political party, or who refused to identify with one, were considered to be not supporting the government in power.

Below is a table that outlines the governing political parties in each survey public. 

Pew Research Center’s Spring 2021 Global Attitudes Survey

Results for the survey are based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Gallup and Langer Research Associates. The results are based on national samples, unless otherwise noted. More details about our international survey methodology and country-specific sample designs are available here. Results for the U.S. survey are based on data from the American Trends Panel.

The American Trends Panel survey methodology

Overview

The American Trends Panel (ATP), created by Pew Research Center, is a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. Panelists participate via self-administered web surveys. Panelists who do not have internet access at home are provided with a tablet and wireless internet connection. Interviews are conducted in both English and Spanish. The panel is being managed by Ipsos.

Data in this report is drawn from the panel wave conducted Feb. 1 to Feb. 7, 2021. A total of 2,596 panelists responded out of 2,943 who were sampled, for a response rate of 88%. This does not include one panelist who was removed from the data due to extremely high rates of refusal or straightlining. The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 4%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 2%. The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 2,596 respondents is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

Panel recruitment

The ATP was created in 2014, with the first cohort of panelists invited to join the panel at the end of a large, national, landline and cellphone random-digit-dial survey that was conducted in both English and Spanish. Two additional recruitments were conducted using the same method in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Across these three surveys, a total of 19,718 adults were invited to join the ATP, of whom 9,942 (50%) agreed to participate.

In August 2018, the ATP switched from telephone to address-based recruitment. Invitations were sent to a random, address-based sample of households selected from the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File. Two additional recruitments were conducted using the same method in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Across these three address-based recruitments, a total of 17,161 adults were invited to join the ATP, of whom 15,134 (88%) agreed to join the panel and completed an initial profile survey. In each household, the adult with the next birthday was asked to go online to complete a survey, at the end of which they were invited to join the panel. Of the 25,076 individuals who have ever joined the ATP, 13,553 remained active panelists and continued to receive survey invitations at the time this survey was conducted.

The U.S. Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File has been estimated to cover as much as 98% of the population, although some studies suggest that the coverage could be in the low 90% range.[2 numoffset="2" AAPOR Task Force on Address-based Sampling. 2016. “AAPOR Report: Address-based Sampling.”] The American Trends Panel never uses breakout routers or chains that direct respondents to additional surveys.

Sample design

The overall target population for this survey was non-institutionalized persons ages 18 and older, living in the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii.

This study featured a stratified random sample from the ATP. The sample was allocated according to the following strata, in order: tablet households, U.S.-born Hispanics, foreign-born Hispanics, high school education or less, foreign-born Asians, not registered to vote, people ages 18 to 34, uses internet weekly or less, non-Hispanic Black adults, nonvolunteers and all other categories not already falling into any of the above.

Questionnaire development and testing

The questionnaire was developed by Pew Research Center in consultation with Ipsos. The web program was rigorously tested on both PC and mobile devices by the Ipsos project management team and Pew Research Center researchers. The Ipsos project management team also populated test data which was analyzed in SPSS to ensure the logic and randomizations were working as intended before launching the survey.

Incentives

All respondents were offered a post-paid incentive for their participation. Respondents could choose to receive the post-paid incentive in the form of a check or a gift code to Amazon.com or could choose to decline the incentive. Incentive amounts ranged from $5 to $20 depending on whether the respondent belongs to a part of the population that is harder or easier to reach. Differential incentive amounts were designed to increase panel survey participation among groups that traditionally have low survey response propensities.

Data collection protocol

The data collection field period for this survey was Feb. 1 to Feb. 7, 2021. Postcard notifications were mailed to all ATP panelists with a known residential address on Feb. 1, 2021. 

On Feb. 1 and Feb. 2, invitations were sent out in two separate launches: Soft Launch and Full Launch. Sixty panelists were included in the soft launch, which began with an initial invitation sent on Feb. 1, 2021. The ATP panelists chosen for the initial soft launch were known responders who had completed previous ATP surveys within one day of receiving their invitation. All remaining English- and Spanish-speaking panelists were included in the full launch and were sent an invitation on Feb. 2, 2021.

All panelists with an email address received an email invitation and up to two email reminders if they did not respond to the survey. All ATP panelists that consented to SMS messages received an SMS invitation and up to two SMS reminders.

Data quality checks

To ensure high-quality data, the Center’s researchers performed data quality checks to identify any respondents showing clear patterns of satisficing. This includes checking for very high rates of leaving questions blank, as well as always selecting the first or last answer presented. As a result of this checking, one ATP respondent was removed from the survey dataset prior to weighting and analysis.

Weighting

The ATP data was weighted in a multistep process that accounts for multiple stages of sampling and nonresponse that occur at different points in the survey process. First, each panelist begins with a base weight that reflects their probability of selection for their initial recruitment survey (and the probability of being invited to participate in the panel in cases where only a subsample of respondents were invited). The base weights for panelists recruited in different years are scaled to be proportionate to the effective sample size for all active panelists in their cohort. To correct for nonresponse to the initial recruitment surveys and gradual panel attrition, the base weights for all active panelists are calibrated to align with the population benchmarks identified in the accompanying table to create a full-panel weight.

For ATP waves in which only a subsample of panelists are invited to participate, a wave-specific base weight is created by adjusting the full-panel weights for subsampled panelists to account for any differential probabilities of selection for the particular panel wave. For waves in which all active panelists are invited to participate, the wave-specific base weight is identical to the full-panel weight.

In the final weighting step, the wave-specific base weights for panelists who completed the survey are again calibrated to match the population benchmarks specified above. These weights are trimmed (typically at about the 1st and 99th percentiles) to reduce the loss in precision stemming from variance in the weights. Sampling errors and test of statistical significance take into account the effect of weighting.

The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey.

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.

Dispositions and response rates