3. Views of children’s financial future

In all the nations we surveyed, people are generally pessimistic about the financial future of the next generation in their country. A median of 57% say their children will grow up to be worse off financially than their parents, compared to a median of 34% who say they will be better off.

In high-income countries, Canada and the US, about three-quarters of adults believe children will be worse off.

Similarly high shares are pessimistic in most of the surveyed European countries, all of which are high-income countries. About three-quarters or more in France, Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom say their children will grow up to be financially worse off than their parents.

Poland is the only European country where people are more likely to offer a more optimistic view of the next generation’s financial future: 41% of Poles say their children will be better off, while 31% say they will be worse off. Another 18% of Poles voluntarily say that their future financial situation will be roughly the same.

In the Asia-Pacific region, attitudes are most negative in Australia, Japan and South Korea, where about two-thirds or more say children will be worse off than their parents. People in Malaysia and Sri Lanka are also pessimistic on this issue.

In six other Asia-Pacific countries surveyed, people are more likely to say children will be better off financially than their parents. At least seven out of ten hold this view in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Singapore is the only high-income Asia-Pacific nation where people say children will be better off.

Of the Middle East and North African countries surveyed, people in Turkey have a particularly dim view of children’s financial futures. About two-thirds of Turks say that children in their country will be worse off than their parents.

In sub-Saharan Africa, about two-thirds of adults in Kenya and South Africa also say children will be worse off than their parents.

In the surveyed Latin American countries, opinions are divided. In Colombia and Peru, more people say that children will be worse off than better off, but in Argentina it is the other way around.

Views towards the perception of economic inequality

There is a clear relationship between people’s perception of economic inequality in their country and how they see the financial future of the next generation.

In most countries, people who see the gap between rich and poor as a big problem are particularly pessimistic about how their children will fare financially when they grow up.

Likewise, dissatisfaction with the current economic situation and the functioning of democracy is linked to the feeling that children will be financially worse off than their parents in the future.

Attitudes according to the opinion of the ruling party

The belief that children will grow up to be financially worse off than their parents is also more common among people who do not support their country’s ruling party. For example, in Hungary, 57% of people who do not support the ruling party say that their children will grow up to be financially worse off than their parents. This opinion is shared by only 20% of Hungarians who support the ruling party. (Read Appendix B for the classification of ruling parties from spring 2024)

Reviews by age and income

In most countries, older and younger adults generally have the same view of children’s financial future. There are also some big differences by income level.

How views of the next generation’s financial future have changed over time

In the 15 surveyed countries, the public’s economic prospects are worse today than before the coronavirus pandemic. For example, the share of Germans who think their children will grow up to be financially worse off than their parents has increased by 19 percentage points since 2019 – from 42% then to 61% today.