Most of the world expects children to be worse off than their parents

More than half the world now expects the next generation to have it harder, not easier. It is worth holding the other side of the finding too: around a third still expect children to be better off, so this is a widely shared worry, not a settled fact.

For most of the last century, the quiet promise of ordinary life was that children would do a little better than the generation before. When Pew Research Center asked adults across 36 countries in 2024 whether that still held, a median of 57% said no: children in their country will grow up to be worse off financially than their parents. Only 34% expected them to be better off. The old assumption has, in most places, quietly reversed.

It matters to read the second number as carefully as the first. Around a third of people still expect the next generation to do better, and a good deal depends on the country, the decade and the policies in between. This is a widely shared worry, not a law of nature, and worries that are shared this widely are usually about the mood of the times as much as any single family's prospects. The future is not fixed, and pessimism about it has been wrong before.

What the figure does capture honestly is how heavy this particular worry has become for parents. It is not really about a number on a payslip. It is the fear of handing on a smaller, more precarious world than the one you were given, and of being unable to protect the people you most want to protect. That fear is real, and it is felt privately by millions of people who assume they are worrying alone.

That assumption is the part worth changing first. A worry held by more than half the adults in the world is not a private failing, it is a common inheritance, and it is lighter when it is named among people who understand it. The Tribe cannot promise anyone's children an easier decade, and it would be dishonest to try. What it is being built to do is make sure no parent carries the fear for their children in silence, and that families face an uncertain future inside a community rather than on their own. We are early, and we would rather you help build that than wait for it.