Less than half of USA Today readers think their children will live better lives than them - mainly due to the current levels of debt prevalent across the US.

The newspaper conducted a poll about the standard and future standard of living in America, and 54 percent indicated that their standard of living is not better than it was in 2003.

In total, 45 percent of survey respondents felt that their children will be able to live more comfortably than they do now.

"I don't think it is going to be as easy for them. They're going to have to pay back a tremendous debt load ... I just don't see the opportunities being there," Matt Gwynne, a 63-year-old retired executive from Angier, North Carolina, told the publication.

USA Today will be looking at how the Americans and the US economy "are not advancing" in feature articles in the forthcoming months.

Professor of economics at Southern State Community College Bill Horne, writing in his column for the People's Defender last week, said gas prices, rising food prices and increasing energy bills were all contributing to more-difficult living for Americans.

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