Emerging Asian markets believe inequality gap will worsen for future generations

People in Asia Pacific’s emerging markets (46.8) are less optimistic about the state of the world for the next generation than those in developed markets (68.1), according to a survey conducted by MasterCard.

“The World Bank recently announced that for the first time less than 10 percent of the world’s population will be living in extreme poverty by the end of this year. Progress in Asia Pacific has been key to global poverty reduction but while people across the region are confident the economic prospects of the future generation are going to improve, those in emerging markets are deeply concerned that the gap between the rich and the poor will widen,” said Georgette Tan, MasterCard Group head for Communications, Asia Pacific.

For MasterCard’s first Next Generation Well-Being Index, almost 9,000 people across Asia Pacific were asked about the outlook for the next generation, covering issues including gender and financial equality, the environment, health, work- life balance, stress, disease and crime.

While both emerging and developed markets expressed optimism that personal wealth would improve for the next generation they were sharply divided when it came to improvements in financial inequality.

People in Asia Pacific’s emerging markets believed the gap between the haves and the have nots is likely to get worse over the coming years (17.3), while people in developed markets think it will improve (62.5).

“These concerns reflect a growing reality that while the world has been able to pull millions out of poverty in recent decades, financial inequality has nevertheless been rising. It is crucial that as emerging markets grow everyone is included and able to reap the benefits. Inclusive growth is a key tenet of MasterCard’s work in the region, helping banks to provide financial services to those currently unable to save, as well as funding entrepreneurship training for people wanting to start their own business,” Tan said.

People in Asia Pacific’s emerging markets also felt that gender equality, the state of the environment, and violent crime is likely to get worse for the next generation.

Emerging markets were more pessimistic than developed markets about everything except work- life balance. Along with overall health, work-life balance was one of the few areas where people in emerging markets were actually very optimistic that the next generation would see marked improvements.

In contrast, in developed markets, work- life balance was one of the areas people were less optimistic about ( 60.8), led by those in Taiwan (41.2) and Japan ( 47.4). But of all issues, people in developed markets are most concerned about the quality of the environment for the next generation (52.8).

Overall, people in Vietnam, Myanmar and Bangladesh were the most pessimistic that the next generation’s wellbeing was likely to improve, while people in Taiwan, followed by Korea, and Hong Kong were the most optimistic.

On average across Asia Pacific, women were marginally more optimistic about the state of the world for the next generation than men.

Nearly 9,000 respondents across Asia Pacific were asked 10 questions pertaining to the issues and outlook for the next generation. Next generation was defined as anyone born since the year 2000, so people who will be 30 or under by the year 2030. The results of their responses were subsequently averaged to form the MasterCard Worldwide Next Generation Well Being Index ( NG- WBI) score. The NG- WBI Index score ranges from zero to 100 where zero represents the maximum negative response, 100 represents maximum positive response and 50 represents neutrality.