The FINANCIAL — Whenever we ask respondents from the Caucasus and Eastern Europe about their attitudes, Georgians so frequently seem to answer differently.
Over the last year, this column hastraced the outline of a people that are perpetual outliers: more religious, shorter, more overweight, and nearly always less content with their current situation and more hopeful for their futures than their peers.
To continue the long story of a Georgia that is unsatisfied with the present but happy with the future, we’ll look again at data collected by GORBI for the most recent EU Neighborhood Barometer in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. All these data were collected in the fall of last year, 2012.
Georgians were a little less likely than their neighbors to say that their national economic situation was good, which isn’t too surprising when you see that the ENPI East countries in general averaged a 25% “somewhat” or “very good” response rate. Georgians were also less satisfied with their own household’s financial situation; only 29% said that they were doing alright compared to 43% of the ENPI East. Georgians seem far less happy with their personal job situation (12% vs. 41%), but this number is largely distorted because more than half of Georgians (58%) apparently feel unqualified to assess their own employment status.
If you read this article even occasionally, you could have guessed what’s coming next: the unusually gloomy attitude in Georgia becomes unusually rosy when the respondent is looking ahead. When we asked about the next 12 months instead of the current one, Georgians are sure that money won’t be so tight for themselves or their country.
Only about a quarter of the ENPI east felt that their country’s economy would be taking forward steps or that their family would be better off. Georgians, on the other hand, are relatively sure that the country’s economy is about to take off (64%) or at least cruise for a while (17%). Six out of ten Georgians polled felt their family would have more stable finances, and two more at least didn’t see any stumbling.
It’s strange, though, to compare this expected household windfall to the far fewer Georgians (34%) that feel that they will have a better employment situation. Here again we see over half the responses were “Don’t know,” but it still begs the question; if their job situation isn’t going to improve, do they expect their other family members to pick up the slack? Or maybe to find some money under the mattress?
All data in this article have margins of error of around 3.5% at 95% confidence. Visit our website at gorbi.com for more articles.
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