Keeping Track: greater expectations

Americans are peering into the '00s with increasing optimism about the next generation's fiscal health.

In a random telephone poll of 1,000 adults, 38 percent said those born in 2000 would be better off - when they reach adulthood - than they themselves are now, according to a yearly, nationwide Lutheran Brotherhood survey taken by Yankelovich Partners.

Those polled this year were also more bullish than those surveyed a few years ago on the strong economy outdoing itself. Only 23 percent saw the US economy getting even better in 2000; in 1997, the number stood at 26 percent.

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society