Americans see QOL going to the dogs
http://pewresearch.org/social/pack.php?PackID=19
Americans See Less Progress on Their Ladder of Life
September 14, 2006
In the past four years, some of the edge has come off good old
American optimism.
Just under half (49%) of the respondents in a new Pew Research Center
survey rate the quality of the life they expect to be leading five
years from now higher than their current quality of life. As recently
as 2002, more than six-in-ten (61%) Americans said their future would
be better than their present.
The new Pew survey also finds that a quarter of adults rate their
life five years from now the same as they rate their current life,
while just 12% rate the future worse (the remaining 14% say they
aren’t sure). Thus, looking at only the “worse” and “better” ratings,
Americans continue to tilt heavily positive — by a ratio of four-to-
one — in their outlook about the future.
Even so, the downturn in personal optimism since 2002 is the sharpest
recorded in the more than 40 years that both Pew and the Gallup
organization have been conducting this “ladder of life” survey.1
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