Researchers Ask: Are People Better Off Than 50 Years Ago? (marketwatch.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader gollum123 quotes MarketWatch: Are you doing better than the previous generation? The Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., asked nearly 43,000 people in 38 countries around the globe that question this past spring. Residents in 20 countries said people like them were better off than they were 50 years ago. In Vietnam, 88% felt better off, followed by India (69%), South Korea (68%), Japan (65%), Germany (65%), Turkey (65%), the Netherlands (64%), Sweden (64%), Poland (62%) and Spain (60%)...

The U.S. was among the other 18 countries in which people said they were actually worse off than half a century ago. In Senegal, 45% felt this way, followed by Nigeria (54%), Kenya (53%), the U.S. (41%), Ghana (47%), Brazil (49%), France (46%), Hungary (39%), Lebanon (54%) and Peru (46%).
55% of Canadians feel they're better off, while just 45% of people in the U.K. feel the same way, according to the article.

"Venezuela, which has suffered from political unrest and economic turbulence in recent years, was last on the list. Some 72% people there said they felt worse off than 50 years ago."

Comments

Re:How can they compare?

[sound vision]

The surveys are designed to measure very specific sentiments people have. Knowing people's sentiments can be useful and interesting - most immediately to the fields of psychology and sociology, which in turn have an impact on basically everything humans are involved in. It doesn't measure actual quality-of-life, and doesn't pretend to. There are a bunch of studies that do try to measure quality-of-life, and off the top of my head, those studies pretty much agree with people's sentiments.

Re:The trend here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Venezuela is not liberal, it's socialist. These are two quite different things, despite efforts to conflate the two..

Measurement of a Feeling

[Roger W Moore]

Note that TFA simply asked if people thought they were better off than two generations ago, rather than doing some type of measurement.

Whether or not someone feels better off than they think they would have been 50 years ago is a purely subjective judgement. You might be able to prove that people actually are better off in terms of wealth, health etc. but it is still possible that they feel worse off despite this due to divisive politics, terrorist threats, mass immigration etc.

When it comes to how people feel the only practical measure is to ask them and trust their responses. A survey like this is a measurement of that subjective feeling.

For what percentage of the population?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you were a big name, or ran afoul of him in his/your travels, Hoover simply lacked the manpower compared to what is possible today.

The FBI is bigger in manpower, funding, and technology than it was 50 years ago, and apathy surrounding privacy and police conduct has only made it worse.

Stupid American Responses

[dcw3]

So, the response from Americans likely had a lot of people who weren't alive 50 yrs ago. I was 9 back then, so let me help you. It was 1967

1. We were in a hugely unpopular war in Vietnam.
2. There were race riots in the streets of Detroit...I lived there
3. Most people had 3-5 channels of black and white TV that typically ended around midnight.
4. Few people places air conditioning
5. Home telephones typically had "party lines"...you shared your number with neighbors and took turns.
6. There were no ATMs, grocery scanners, cell phones, personal computers, or even calculators.
7. Only about 50% of people completed high school...you can check census facts. Less than 20% had a 4 yr degree
8. Life expectancy was 14 years lower

I would argue that families were more tight knit back then, but other than that, if you think you're not better off today, you'll have to come up with some facts to back it up.