The Mediterranean is a sea of misery, according to the Pew Research Center’s recent report on global economic trends.

Nations ringing the Mediterranean consistently rank at or near the top of multiple measures of pessimism in the 39-country survey. And, in what should surprise exactly no one, Greece has by far the bleakest outlook, topping no fewer than five of the six metrics we examined.

Greeks were nearly unanimous in calling their country’s economic situation very or somewhat bad (99%) and in saying they were dissatisfied with the way things are going there (97%). They overwhelmingly agreed that their personal finances were in bad shape (85%); more than half said they expected both the national economy and their personal finances to worsen over the next 12 months (64% and 54%, respectively).

The only category, in fact, where Greece was toppled off its pessimistic perch was in their expectations for their children’s future. The winner there was France, where a stunning 90% said they expected the next generation to be worse off than their parents. (Greece, at 67%, came in at #5, behind Japan, Britain and Italy.)

The accompanying chart depicts just how far on the ledge of unhappiness these five Mediterranean countries are (along with the median for all 39 nations surveyed). Each vertex represents one of six questions we asked; the points represent the percentage of respondents giving a negative or pessimistic response.

Beyond the five shown in the chart, three other nations with Mediterranean coastlines also expressed high levels of pessimism on all or most questions: Egypt, Tunisia and the Palestinian territories. (To be fair, two other Mediterranean countries surveyed, Israel and Turkey, were somewhat more optimistic than their neighbors.)

The countries in which the highest percentages of people expressed optimism don’t fall into such a neat geographic pattern, many being scattered among east Asia and the Pacific Rim (China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia), Latin America (Brazil, Chile and Bolivia) and sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya). Most of these countries have experienced rapid growth and rising living standards and anticipate more of the same in the future.

This factor is also made clear in Pew Research Center surveys and analyses that show which Americans do or don’t own stocks, and how this dividing line has widened the wealth gap in the period since the recovery began to take hold in 2009.

A Pew Research survey in March found that 53% of Americans say they have no money at all invested in the stock market, including retirement accounts.

Broad majorities of those in households earning $75,000 a year or more (80%) and those with a college degree (77%) say they have money invested in the stock market. By contrast, just 15% of those earning less than $30,000 a year and 25% of those with no more than a high school diploma say they have money in the market.

However, while stock owners have seen the value of their investments rise, their views on the national economy remain gloomy and are no different than the views of non-stock owners.

Overall, 17% of stockholders rate the national economy as only fair or poor. Similarly, just 15% of those without money in the market rate the economy positively.

And owning stocks also has no impact on economic optimism. Just 23% of stock owners say the national economy will be better in a year, compared with 26% of those who do not own stocks.

Our March survey found that most Americans ranked the stock market last among six factors affecting their finances. Nearly two-thirds (64%) said gas prices had the greatest impact on their wallets, followed by prices for food and consumer goods (58%), the federal deficit (39%), the jobs situation (39%) and real estate values (32%). Only 23% cited the stock market as an important factor.

The demographic differences when it comes to which Americans have a big stake in the market – and the biggest difference is family income – have also been behind a growth in the so-called wealth gap since the end of the recession.

A Pew Research Center study in April found that the upper 7% of Americans as far as mean net worth saw their wealth rise an estimated 28% while the meant net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4% between 2009 and 2011.

Driving this was the fact that affluent households have far more of their money in stocks and other financial holdings, and they reaped the benefits of the rise in the markets. Less affluent households typically have their wealth concentrated in the value of their homes, and while the housing market has started to rebound, it did not see the kind of surge that the markets had.

This finding was underlined by a report issued this week by the Federal Reserve in a section analyzing “How Much Household Wealth Has Been Recovered,” (p. 14).

Of the total recovery, 62% of the gain was due to increased stock market wealth, the analysis said. “Stock wealth is unevenly held, with the vast majority of stocks owned by a relatively small number of wealthy families. Thus, most families have recovered much less than the average amount.”

“A conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified,” the report stated.

Such deprivation is closely related to national wealth. For example, in Australia, Canada and Germany – three of the most well-off countries surveyed – roughly one-in-ten say they have struggled in the past year to pay for enough to eat. Meanwhile, in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and Senegal – among the poorest countries surveyed – half or more say food for their family has been hard to come by.

The United States is an outlier from this pattern. Despite being the richest country in the survey, nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) say they had trouble putting food on the table in the past 12 months. This is up from just 16% who reported such deprivation in 2007, the year before the Great Recession began.

Americans’ reported level of deprivation is closer to that experienced by Indonesians or Greeks than it is the British or the Canadians. In fact, the percentage of Americans who say they could not afford the food needed by their families at some point in the last year is three times that in Germany, more than twice that in Italy and Canada.

Eurostat, the European statistical agency, announced today that the European Union’s annual inflation rate in April was 1.4%, down from a rate of 2.7% in April 2012. Nonetheless, across eight EU nations surveyed by the Pew Research Center in March 2013, a median of 67% said rising prices were a “very” big problem in their countries. As the European Central Bank contemplates interest rate cuts to stimulate economic growth in a euro area now in recession, such public worry about inflation only complicates their task.

As the International Monetary Fund noted in its Spring 2013 World Economic Outlook, inflation is the dog that hasn’t barked in the wake of the Great Recession. Despite unprecedented monetary easing through various conventional and unconventional measures by both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, prices in the European Union generally have been falling. In April, according to today’s Eurostat report, prices in Germany were rising by 1.1%, by 0.8% in France and by 1.5% in Spain.

Nevertheless, majorities in six of the eight countries see rising prices as a very big problem. The Greeks were the most worried: 94% say inflation is a major issue. But official statistics show that in March, when the survey was taken, Greek prices were actually falling at an annual rate of 0.2%; in April, according to Eurostat, consumer prices fell at a 0.6% annual rate.

Despite a national narrative widely propounded by German elites and government officials that the German psyche has been permanently scarred by the hyperinflation of the 1920s, rendering modern Germans inflation-phobic, only 31% of Germans think rising prices are a very big problem.

This relative lack of worry about inflation among Germans may be a sign that the European Central Bank, which has long been sensitive to German inflation concerns, has more room to maneuver than might otherwise have been thought, at least with the German public.

Bruce Stokes is director of global economic attitudes in the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project.