In the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, conducted last spring, only 18 percent of Japanese said they expected economic conditions in their country to improve over the next year. Remarkably, that represented a 13-percentage-point increase from 2008, when just 5 percent of Japanese said they expected improvement. The corresponding 2009 figures in China, India, and the United States were 82 percent, 75 percent, and 59 percent, respectively. Fewer than one-fifth (19 percent) of Japanese told the 2009 Pew interviewers that children in their country would grow up to be “better off” than people are today, compared with 89 percent of Chinese, 78 percent of Indians, and 36 percent of Americans.
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