The bank account is thin, but the future looks pretty good.
That, oddly enough, is the view of many Americans who predict this year will be a better year than the last, even if they fear that the US economy and their own financial circumstances won’t improve.
A whopping 82 percent are optimistic about what the new year will bring for their families, according to the latest AP-GfK poll. That sunny outlook seems at odds with other findings.
Nearly two-thirds think their family finances will worsen or stay about the same this year. And fewer than half think the nation’s economy will improve, even though Americans rated last year as a huge downer.
The poll found that nearly three-fourths of Americans think last year was a bad year for the country, which was rocked by job losses, home foreclosures and economic sickness. Forty-two percent rated it “very bad.”
That’s clearly worse than in 2006, the last time a similar poll was taken. The survey that year found that 58 percent of Americans felt the nation had suffered a bad year, and 39 percent considered it a good year.
Fewer than half as many people, 16 percent, said their family had a “very good year” last year compared with 2006.
Behind the gloominess, however, are more hopeful views that seem to reflect Americans’ traditional optimism or, perhaps, wishful thinking.
Three in five Americans said their own family had a good year last year.
Some 72 percent of Americans said they’re optimistic about what this year will bring for the country. Even more are hopeful about what the year will bring for their families.
But last year every corner of the country saw steep job losses, and the national unemployment rate stands at 10 percent. Millions of Americans saw their savings or retirement accounts shrink, and many are rethinking how long they will have to work and where they might find income.
Preliminary FBI figures for the first half of last year showed crime falling throughout the nation, with robberies down by 6.5 percent.
Americans are not optimistic, however, about the nation’s two wars. Thirty-one percent think the situation in Afghanistan will get better, while 67 percent think it will stay the same or get worse.
The results were about the same for Iraq.
Given that US President Barack Obama took office last year and Democrats hold solid majorities in Congress, perhaps it’s not surprising that Democrats have a brighter view of the current and coming years than do Republicans.
Only 10 percent of Republicans said last year was a good year, compared with about one-third of Democrats and independents.
A robust 87 percent of Democrats are optimistic about what this year will bring for the country, compared with 53 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of independents.
People’s views of their personal circumstances were divided along partisan lines, too. Only one in five Republicans think their family’s finances will improve this year. Nearly half of Democrats and 40 percent of independents hold that view.
The AP-GfK Poll was conducted between Dec. 10 and Dec. 14 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media and involved landline and cellphone interviews of 1,001 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
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