Economical

The majority of respondents evaluate the access to education (71%) and health care (66%) as being very good. Other investigated areas such as job opportunities, social security for the elderly, standard of living for the handicapped, and mainly financial conditions to start a family or to get a flat are assessed in a very critical way. The respondents were unanimous in their views on life conditions of officials, civil servants and entrepreneurs which they considered to be the best (78% or more precisely 74%).

Since February 1997 we have been regularly surveying what palace people allocate to the economic standard of our country compared to nine other European countries. 1% assesses the Czech economy as being very good, 54% as probably good, 39% as probably bad and 4% as very bad; only 1% could not judge the situation. When all countries were evaluated a table headed by Germany and followed by Austria was drafted.

With the exception of Romania and Bulgaria where the majority of inhabitants perceive their materialistic living conditions as being bad, the inhabitants of the other countries usually describe them as being average. This group in the Czech Republic contains 48% of respondents. The proportion of our inhabitants describing their condition as being very good or relatively good is 28%, which is the best result out of all countries surveyed.

The inhabitants of the surveyed countries do not expect any significant economic changes both for the better or worse before the beginning of the next year. Approximately half of Poles, Hungarians and Russians and approximately two fifths of Czechs, Slovaks and Bulgarians envisage economic stagnation. Those who are most enthusiastic about their future are Hungarians – almost one third of them (31%) envisage a positive development and only eight percent a negative development.