The bar chart illustrates the proportions of young Europeans who expect five aspects of their lives – health, air quality, water quality, food quality and communication between people – to improve or deteriorate over the following 20 years.
Overall, communication between people is expected to undergo the most positive change, whereas air quality is viewed as the area most likely to worsen. In fact, in all five categories, the proportion anticipating deterioration is greater than the proportion expecting improvement.
Regarding the areas related to health and the environment, health is predicted to improve by approximately 42% of young Europeans, while the remaining 58% anticipate a decline. Expectations for water quality are slightly less positive, with 40% forecasting an improvement compared with 60% expecting it to deteriorate. Air quality attracts the most pessimistic outlook: only around 23% believe it will improve, leaving roughly 77% who expect it to get worse.
Food quality and interpersonal communication receive comparatively more favourable predictions. Just under half of respondents (approximately 48%) expect food quality to improve, while a slightly larger proportion, at about 52%, foresee deterioration. The most optimistic expectations concern communication between people, with around 63% anticipating an improvement and only 37% predicting a decline. Thus, communication is the only category in which expectations of improvement outweigh those of deterioration.