A recent survey conducted by Deloitte, a leading global provider of audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax and legal services, has revealed that over two-thirds of millennials and Generation Zs in Turkey frequently worry about their personal financial situations.
The 2021 Millennial and Gen Z Survey, conducted on 500 people from Turkey, 300 millennials and 200 from Generation Z, revealed that concerns about finances, family welfare and uncertainty about job and career prospects caused high stress levels.
According to the survey, 51 percent of millennials and 65 percent of Generation Z said they feel stressed all or most of the time, with two-thirds of participants acknowledging that they worry or become stressed by their personal financial situations.
While their families’ welfare was the main cause of stress for 57 percent of millennials and 63 percent of Generation Zs, the second among their top stress drivers was their long-term financial future with 53 and 62 percent, respectively, the poll showed.
When asked “How do you expect the general economic situation in your country to change over the next 12 months?” 54 percent of millennials said they believe it will worsen, while 17 percent said it would stay the same and 20 percent said it would improve.
Forty-seven percent of Generation Z said the economy would deteriorate in Turkey in the next year, while 17 percent said it would stay the same and 18 percent said it would improve.
According to the survey, unemployment is the greatest personal concern for 41 percent of both millennials and Generation Z. While 32 percent of Generation Z listed “sexual harassment” as their second biggest concern, 27 percent of millennials said it was income inequality/distribution of wealth.
Eighty-three percent of millennials and 76 percent of Generation Zs surveyed in Turkey think that wealth and income are distributed unequally, the survey further revealed.
While 40 percent of millennials think greed and self-interest by business/wealthy people is the biggest factor behind wealth and income inequality, Generation Zs believe, with 38 percent, that it is laws, regulations and policies that maintain a system to favor business/wealthy people.
The Deloitte survey comes amid a deteriorating economy in Turkey, where inflation that has remained in double digits for most of the last four years and jumped to a two-year high of 17.53 percent in June, and a slump in the lira’s value are affecting the standard of living, putting many people into poverty.
Meanwhile, a recent survey conducted by the Ankara-based MetroPoll has revealed that only 36.2 percent of Turks between the ages of 18 and 24, who didn’t cast votes in the latest general election held in 2018, stated that they feel closest to the Public Alliance, formed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
Some 44.1 percent, however, said that they feel closest to the Nation Alliance, an opposition bloc established to challenge Erdoğan’s 19-year rule, which is composed of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the nationalist İYİ (Good) Party and the Islamist Felicity Party (SP).