This chapter looks at why empowering public understanding of the budget has become such a central issue for restoring public finances. Governments face severe fiscal pressures and public trust remains low. Achieving consensus on key policy trade-offs is difficult. In this environment, restoring public finances is not just a technical task. It is a democratic and communication challenge. If citizens and their representatives do not understand and own the problem and the challenges, even well-designed fiscal reforms will fail. This chapter sets out why strengthening public understanding has become essential. It introduces a way forward to bring people back into the budget conversation.
The People and the Budget
Empowering Public Understanding of Public Finances
Abstract
The fiscal backdrop has become increasingly challenging in many OECD countries. Average public debt across the OECD is projected to reach 113% of GDP by the end of 2027 (OECD, 2025[1]). Persistent deficits have raised concerns about debt sustainability and drive up borrowing costs.
These pressures have been intensified by recent events and structural trends. The responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and energy crises have prompted extensive emergency support to households and businesses. Governments are also having to manage rising defence spending, population ageing and the costs of extreme weather events.
Despite the pressures, action to restore public finances has so far fallen short of what is needed. Budget bills have been very difficult to pass in parliaments in a large number of countries. Fiscal adjustments have been slow and fragmented. This leaves governments with little room to respond to future downturns, to address future costs related to ageing, or to fund core priorities. Restoring public finances means ensuring the budget can fund today’s priorities, manage long-term pressures, and weather unexpected economic shocks.
However, public understanding acts as a binding constraint on reform. Governments can often design sound fiscal measures. Yet, turning them into lasting change depends on political and public acceptance. In today's digital environment, citizens are more informed and used to voicing their concerns. Policy decisions cannot succeed without broad public ownership. This requires a shared understanding of why action is needed and who bears the costs.
The gap between designing reforms and delivering them has widened in recent years. Reforms that make fiscal sense often lose momentum and even face backlash in the public arena. They are postponed, diluted, or reversed. When parliaments struggle to make clear policy choices, it directly damages public trust. It undermines the credibility of institutions to handle long-term challenges. Consequently, successfully restoring public finances is a key tool for improving trust in government.
A lack of public understanding and sense of ownership widens this implementation gap. When people do not understand the consequences of inaction, or feel no ownership over the solutions, opposition hardens. Reforms to taxes, pensions, or public spending routinely stall due to public backlash. This happens not necessarily because the policies are flawed, but because their purpose and impacts are not owned by citizens. Misunderstanding fuels perceptions of unfairness, making reform much harder to sustain.
The reasons citizens trust their government are changing. This shift is central to why the gap between designing reforms and delivering them persists.
According to the results of the 2024 OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions (OECD Trust Survey), 44% of respondents report low or no trust in their national government. This outweighs the 39% who report high or moderately high trust (OECD, 2024[2]).
There is a clear divide in how citizens view their government. Trust in day‑to‑day interactions with the state remains relatively robust (Figure 1.1). For example, a majority of people who came into recent contact with the respective services report satisfaction with administrative services (66%) and the education (57%) and health system (52%). Furthermore, a majority believe public institutions will treat their applications fairly and protect their personal data. These routine interactions remain key drivers of overall trust (OECD, 2024[2]).
However, trust drops sharply when it comes to complex policy decisions, which is exactly what the budget involves. Across the OECD, people are highly sceptical about the capacity of governments to manage long-term challenges. For instance, only 37% believe the government fairly balances the interests of current and future generations one of the top drivers of trust today.
This lack of trust is driven directly by a perceived lack of political voice. Just 30% of people feel their political system lets them have a say in what the government does. This gap matters. Public finance is defined by these complex trade-offs. Balancing the budget means funding today’s services without placing an unsustainable debt burden on tomorrow’s taxpayers. And trust is closely linked to perceptions of fairness. When citizens doubt the government's ability to balance interests fairly, they may resist difficult fiscal choices.
A sense of political agency is also crucial. OECD data show a 47‑percentage‑point trust gap between individuals who feel that ‘people like them’ have a say in government decisions and those who do not. Where citizens doubt the process or their ability to influence outcomes, it can be harder to expect them to accept difficult fiscal reforms.
% respondents answering “likely” or “satisfied”
Note: The chart shows the share of respondents who answered positively regarding the reliability and responsiveness of public institutions. The satisfaction rates with essential public services shown are for individuals who have come into recent contact with administrative, education or health services, respectively.
Source: Adapted from the OECD 2024 Survey on Trust in Public Institutions (OECD, 2024[2]).
A lack of clear communication deepens this problem. Under 40% of respondents in the OECD Trust Survey (OECD, 2024[2]) find that the government clearly explains how reforms affect people like them. Only about one-third of people find government statistics trustworthy, easy to find, and easy to understand.
Rebuilding trust will be central to restoring public finances. Without a clear understanding of the problem and confidence in how decisions are made, fiscal reforms are more likely to trigger backlash and to be delayed, weakened or reversed. Strengthening understanding and trust is therefore not optional, it is essential to making reform stick. Ensuring reforms are successful, in turn, provides the opportunity to restore trust in the government’s ability to manage long-term challenges.
OECD analysis shows that trust depends heavily on two factors: how well governments communicate and base decisions on evidence (OECD, 2024[2]).
Communicating public finances has always been challenging. There are three fundamental barriers to overcome (Chapter 3).
First, big numbers. Fiscal data involves billions or trillions. These figures are too large for the human brain to process easily. When numbers lose their human scale, they lose their meaning.
Second, salience. Budgets often feel disconnected from daily life. National deficits, structural balances, and long-term debt are abstract concepts. People care about how policies affect their local schools, hospitals, and personal finances. If the budget does not connect to these everyday realities, people will not engage with it.
Third, the curse of knowledge. Experts and officials understand the technical details of the budget. They often forget what it is like not to know them. This leads to the use of heavy jargon and acronyms. The result is impenetrable language that only serves to alienate the public and prevent a shared understanding of fiscal challenges.
These inherent challenges are now compounded not only by low trust but also by a more contested digital environment. The current information environment, with a large number of new influencers with catchy content and emotional content leaves less room for shared facts or compromise. This makes it even harder to reach a consensus on sustainable public finances. According to the OECD 2025 Survey of Government Communicators (OECD, forthcoming[3]), more than three‑quarters say that the current environment makes it harder to communicate policies clearly. Furthermore, two‑thirds report that the politicisation of communication undermines their ability to build public trust.1
This highlights that communication challenges are not limited to public misunderstanding. They also reflect a rapidly shifting environment that governments have not yet fully adapted to.
Traditionally, policymakers relied on a shared public sphere. People largely watched the same evening news and read the same newspapers. Specialist journalists helped translate complex fiscal issues into accessible narratives the public could understand. By building their expertise and through sustained coverage, they helped connect national finances to everyday concerns. The decline of traditional media, the shift towards faster, and often more fragmented information channels have weakened an important link between governments and citizens. This calls for significant work to adapt how budgets are communicated.
The OECD 2025 Survey of Government Communicators highlights this shift (OECD, forthcoming[3]). Half of senior communicators believe traditional news media remains influential mainly because political leaders prioritise it, rather than because it reflects how most people now consume information. A further 28% report that traditional media is no longer the primary channel through which they achieve their communication objectives.
% that used each as a source of news in the last week, United States
Note: The chart is based on the question “which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?” The total sample in each year ≈ 2000. Note there was a sampling and weighting change from 2021 onward, yet the diverging trend was clear prior to this change.
Source: Adapted from the Oxford Reuters Digital News Report 2025 (Newman et al., 2025[4])
Social media platforms and video networks have replaced legacy outlets as the primary source of news for many. The smartphone is now a key gateway to information, pushing content toward short-form video and audio (see Figure 1.2 for the example of the United States). This is often brought to audiences by algorithms that seek to maximise attention. The shift toward video is driven by a stark generational divide. Younger “digital and social natives”, for example, now say that social media and video networks are their main source of news. Rather than relying exclusively on traditional newsroom settings, these younger audiences are opting for a more fragmented media diet where individual personalities and independent creators play a significant role in shaping public debate.
At the same time, news avoidance is rising. Across global surveys, 40% of people say they sometimes or often actively avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017 (Newman et al., 2025[4]). People are tuning out because the news feels too negative, too complex, or causes arguments. Publishers often respond by producing more alerts and more stories, creating a sense of overload.
In the competition for public attention, institutions are losing ground. The “creator economy” is on the rise. Citizens increasingly prefer to get their news from individual personalities. In many cases, these are found to be more relatable, authentic, entertaining and trustworthy than traditional media.
The rules of communication have also changed. Algorithms prioritise content that keeps users on the app, meaning standard press releases and links to government websites penetrate less through to the public.
For policymakers, this raises a critical question: how can they explain complex fiscal challenges when attention is fragmented, trust is contested, and the channels traditionally used by government no longer align with how citizens consume information?
The next chapters of the report will focus on how to enable public understanding and ownership. Empowering public understanding requires action across the institutions that shape fiscal decisions. Ministries of finance, parliamentarians and independent institutions each play a role.
Ministries of finance sit at the centre of budget design. They identify fiscal challenges, develop policy responses, and explain the consequences of inaction. Clear, timely, responsive communication helps reduce uncertainty and anchors debate in shared facts.
To be effective, this communication must go beyond technical precision. It must adapt to how people consume information today. This means using clear language, strong visuals and relatable examples that connect fiscal choices to everyday concerns. It means reaching citizens through platforms they actually use, with social listening also a key part of communication today.
However, communication alone rarely builds trust. Ministries of finance can also engage citizens earlier in the policy process. When people understand trade-offs and see how their input is used, it can build support for fiscal reforms. This makes them more robust and durable. Budgets become collective choices about shared priorities rather than distant technical exercises.
Parliamentarians link fiscal decisions with democratic debate. They approve budgets, scrutinise government proposals and engage directly with citizens. They are often the most visible interpreters of fiscal decisions. Parliamentary committees are particularly important. They provide structured spaces to examine fiscal choices, hear from experts and independent institutions, and engage with people. Strengthening parliamentary understanding and ownership therefore directly supports more informed public debate and more inclusive budget scrutiny.
Independent institutions provide trusted, objective voices. This includes independent fiscal institutions and supreme audit institutions. In polarised and low‑trust environments, their analysis can help establish shared facts and clarify long‑term risks. Independent institutions as well as checks and balances are also important derivers of trust according to the OECD Survey on the drivers of trust in institutions. However, to have an impact beyond expert audiences, their independence must be paired with clear communication. This means dispensing with technical vocabulary and speaking directly to citizens’ concerns across both traditional and new media.
Together, these institutions shape the entire budget process. Aligning their efforts is essential to rebuilding trust in how fiscal decisions are made.
Restoring public finances requires public buy-in and will help build trust. To achieve this, governments must adapt to the modern information environment and overcome the inherent difficulties of communicating about public finances. Recent OECD work on trust demonstrates that transparent and inclusive communication can help build public trust and supports policy implementation (OECD, 2024[2]). New OECD analysis also illustrates what it takes for governments to cut through to citizens in the age of algorithms (OECD, forthcoming[3]).
This report sets out a strategy based on four specific areas. These areas were selected to reflect the full ecosystem of budget accountability, from political decision makers to citizens and independent voices.
First, the report focuses on demystifying the budget for parliamentarians. Elected officials are the primary democratic link between the budget and the people. They hold the ultimate authority to approve fiscal choices. They need to be supported in their role. This ensures they can make the best-informed decisions and act as a bridge, explaining the budget and long-term trade-offs to their constituents.
Second, the report addresses how institutions communicate about public finances. While many citizens worry about deficits, debt is rarely their top concern compared to immediate issues such as the cost of living. To elevate fiscal challenges on the public’s list of concerns, communication must be accessible and personal. This means avoiding technical language that distances experts from citizens. It requires framing choices around local, tangible impacts rather than abstract national goals. Using relatable questions, clear visuals, and plain language helps to break through the noise of the digital age.
Third, the report looks at citizen engagement. Because trust is low, simply broadcasting information from the top down will not help to build legitimacy. Budgets should reflect what a society values. When the public engages meaningfully, budgeting becomes more realistic and effective. Engagement brings in ground-level knowledge and makes the distributional impacts of proposals visible. Moving forward, institutions must design their engagement for influence rather than mere inclusion, showing clearly how public input shapes difficult fiscal trade-offs.
Fourth, the report examines the role of independent fiscal institutions and supreme audit institutions. In an environment of low trust and polarised discourse, independent voices are vital. These bodies are widely trusted to provide objective analysis. To have a real impact, they must act as proactive fiscal advocates. This means combining their independence and analytical credibility with clear, plain-language communication to champion long-term sustainability and help explain the costs of inaction to the public.
Public understanding of public finances is no longer a peripheral: it is central to fiscal sustainability and stable governance and trust. In a context of high debt, low trust and fragmented information, governments cannot rely on technical excellence alone. They must direct greater effort to communicating with the public clearly and engaging them.
The remainder of this report examines how the four pillars outlined above can be strengthened in practice. Together, they offer a pathway to rebuild trust, support informed debate, and enable the difficult fiscal choices that lie ahead.
References
[4] Newman, N. et al. (2025), Digital news report 2025, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism., https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/Digital_News-Report_2025.pdf.
[1] OECD (2025), OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2025 Issue 2: Resilient Growth but with Increasing Fragilities, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9f653ca1-en.
[2] OECD (2024), OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions – 2024 Results: Building Trust in a Complex Policy Environment, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9a20554b-en.
[3] OECD (forthcoming), Reforming Government Communication for the Age of Algorithms, OECD Publishing.
← 1. The OECD surveyed 57 Directors of Communication or similarly senior communication officers from 25 OECD Member and Accession countries between July and September 2025 on their perceptions of the evolution and challenges of the information ecosystem and the public communication function. See (OECD, forthcoming[3]).