By Mark Smulian | 10 July 2013
The youngest adults are the least likely to be sympathetic to poor people or proud of the welfare state, Ipsos Mori chief executive Ben Page has revealed today.
Speaking to the CIPFA annual conference, Page told delegates that they must be aware of changing social attitudes if they are to continue to provide acceptable services during a longer period of austerity.
Surveys showed the most popular areas for spending cuts were overseas aid, benefits and defence. ‘You have done a pretty good job of coping with the challenges of recession and you are a group undoubtedly well equipped to deal with them,’ the chief executive of the market research firm told delegates.
Page said ‘Generation Y’ – those born after 1979 – had attitudes quite different from older people. They were ’rugged individualists’ who, despite facing problems in the homes and jobs markets, ‘tend not to blame the government for problems, but think they should sort it out themselves’.
This generation was also the least sympathetic to the idea of increasing taxes to help poor people, even though people in this group were more likely than any predecessor cohort to expect their children’s lives to be worse,
Page stressed the difficulty for policy makers in accurately judging the public mood.
Surveys appeared to show great pessimism, with only 6% or people thinking Britain was becoming a better place to live in, and 61% that it was getting worse.
But he pointed out that these findings werevery similar to those in 2004, which was long before the recession.
He added that 65% of people said they ‘haven’t really noticed any changes to local council service from the cuts, yet 48% think cuts have gone too far and risk social unrest, and some people even think both.’
But it was possible to improve services in the present climate, he said, noting that the London Borough of Hackney, ‘formerly the maddest place on Earth' – had even achieved a 74% public satisfaction rate.
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