The curious link between prosperity and pessimism

The results are ranked, from left to right, from optimism to pessimism. The most optimistic of the seven countries is India, while the most pessimistic is the United States. What is striking is that there seems to be a strong correlation between prosperity and pessimism. India is by far the poorest country in our list (per capita income, in terms of purchasing power parity, is $6,000 a year), while the US is the richest ($55,000 a year). Indeed, the gulf in optimism between the three gloomiest countries (Britain, Germany and the US) matches the gulf in income. Britain is the poorest of the rich three, with per capita PPP income of $40,000 a year, while the per capita income of the four other countries is $16,000 a year or less.

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Why is this? One possible reason is that prosperity generates a fear that things could get worse – while people in poorer countries really do think that, in the words of the song adopted by Labour as its unofficial anthem in the early Blair years, ‘things can only get better’. However, I suspect that is, at most, only a partial explanation. In general, India, Thailand and Indonesia have all become significantly richer, or at least less poor, in the past 20 years or so. (Brazil sits in the middle, in terms of both economic performance and the balance of optimists and pessimists.) It is therefore more likely that their relative optimism flows less from their poverty than from a perception that things are broadly getting better and will continue to do so.

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