The richer you get, the more pessimistic do you become? Here’s what science has to say

“Doctor, I’ve read that in rich countries people are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the future. But how is that possible, when they’re better off than anyone else?”: It does indeed seem counterintuitive, but the field of science that studies these issues – behavioural psychologists and economists – has gathered data that helps us understand why those who are better off are not necessarily more confident about the future, and what role age and wealth play in this balance.

Psychologists call this ‘dispositional optimism’ and define it as the general expectation that, on the whole, positive things will happen in one’s life. It is therefore not a judgement on how things stand today, but an expectation of how they might turn out in the future. A study that measured this trait in over 15,000 people across 61 countries made it possible to compare, on average, how much people in different countries expect a better future. It is also important to distinguish between different levels of optimism: it is one thing to be confident about one’s own personal life, quite another to be so about one’s country or the world in general. A scientific editorial distinguishes between ‘personal optimism’ (confidence in one’s own individual future) and ‘social optimism’ (confidence in the direction of one’s country), emphasising that people tend, almost everywhere in the world, to be more confident about their own lives than about collective life. A concrete example: one may be concerned about the future of humanity in general, whilst at the same time remaining confident about the future of one’s own children. As we shall see, this distinction helps to explain why personal income and a country’s wealth do not have the same effect on optimism.

Yes, but here we need to distinguish between two different things: how satisfied we are with our lives today, and how much we expect things to improve in the future. A large-scale international survey has shown that people living in rich countries are, on average, more satisfied with their current lives than those living in poorer countries, but it is precisely the citizens of the richest countries who have the least confidence that their lives will improve in the years to come. There is therefore an inverse relationship: the richer a country is, the more its population is content with the present, but the less it believes in a better future. A more recent study covering 61 countries confirms this trend, even when looking at per capita GDP. An even more recent survey, conducted between October and December 2025 amongst nearly 60,000 people in 60 countries, shows the same pattern with updated data: the wealthy countries of Western Europe, such as Germany and France, are among the most pessimistic about the economic outlook for 2026, whilst some countries in the Global South, such as Kenya or Saudi Arabia, remain among the most confident. One possible explanation for this paradox was put forward in the same editorial cited above: it concerns social optimism, that is, confidence in the growth of the country as a whole, rather than personal optimism. According to this interpretation, a country that is already highly developed would offer, in people’s perception, less scope for further economic and social growth than a country that is still developing. This remains an interpretation put forward in an editorial, not a conclusion drawn from a study, and, above all, it concerns the country’s prospects, not those of the individual, as we shall see in the next question.

No, quite the opposite: on a personal level, the opposite is true, and this is consistent with what we have just seen: personal optimism and optimism about one’s own country are two different things. In Italia, amongst those with only a lower secondary school qualification, 22.7 per cent believe their lives will improve over the next five years; amongst university graduates, this figure rises to 40.8 per cent. Having a stable job is also associated with greater confidence in one’s personal future. Greater individual financial security generally goes hand in hand with greater confidence in one’s future life, regardless of how developed the country in which one lives already is. We have already discussed the relationship between money and personal well-being in the factsheet “Does money not bring happiness?”, in which we explain why income contributes to well-being up to a certain point, beyond which it matters less and less.

Yes, and it is one of the most pronounced effects measured in this area. A survey of over 21,000 people across 21 countries asked young people and adults whether they thought the world was improving from one generation to the next: for every additional year of age, the likelihood of answering ‘yes’ falls by 1 per cent. The most recent survey across 60 countries confirms this trend: younger people remain significantly more optimistic about the future, whilst those aged over 55 are pessimistic regarding general confidence, economic expectations and the prospects for world peace.