Citizens’ despondency about the future is a disease of the G7
December 2025
Simon Glynn and Claire Whitehead (2025), Citizens’ despondency about the future is a disease of the G7, Zero Ideas, https://doi.org/10.70272/vfdv
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In the world today, the richer a country is, the more despondent its people tend to feel about the future. In every G7 country, most people believe that the world will be worse for their children than it was for them; in emerging economies it is the other way around. And G7 citizens tend to be less open to change than people in less rich countries.
This dispiriting combination of feelings among G7 citizens risks undermining societal well-being, business growth, and climate action—so political, business, and environmental leaders have a shared interest in tackling the despondency.
We explore the implications of this societal picture in a forthcoming research report in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. In this short paper we focus on understanding the despondency itself, and its relationship not just to GDP/capita, but to GDP growth over a generational timeframe.
