Housing, gas, health care, groceries — the costs keep climbing. Tariffs and war have hiked the price of basics, even the white picket fence. More Americans say they feel financially worse off than before. More are worried about finding or keeping a job. Fewer are getting married, and fewer are having babies.
Yet belief in the American Dream remains strong, even if confidence that it’s achievable is slipping.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents in a new Gallup poll said they thought they could reach that legendary ideal, a four-percentage-point drop from the last survey on the topic in 2024. Their outlook for others was less sunny. When asked if “everyone” in the country had the opportunity to attain the same success, 46 percent indicated yes, down from 51 percent.
“There’s a lot more insecurity these days,” said Misty Heggeness, an economics professor at the University of Kansas. “The traditional things that we used to rely on in terms of economic stability have really been shifting.”
Inflation has pummeled purchasing power. Wealth is growing mainly for those already at the top. Once-solid career paths look less certain as AI advances.
When historian James Truslow Adams coined the term “American Dream” in 1931, he didn’t explicitly mention money. The American Dream, he wrote in his book “The Epic of America,” is a “social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.” The meaning morphed over time, conjuring images of get-rich-quick opulence or a house and 2.5 kids.
Emily Mitzner, a senior director for the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, which partnered with Gallup for the survey, said the pollsters didn’t define the term. They wanted to know: What comes to mind when you think of the American Dream?
Americans this year were most likely to associate the idea with freedom or individual rights, the survey found (33 percent). The next most popular answer was financial security or home ownership (28 percent). Then success or upward mobility (18 percent).
Just 3 percent envisioned opportunity for all.
Among Democrats and Republicans, meanwhile, a unified view emerged: Similar shares (60 percent versus 57 percent) saw the American Dream as not a success or a failure but as “unfinished.”
“Most people across party, across age, say the American experiment is not done,” Mitzner said. “It’s a work in progress.”
Older generations had a smoother path to a higher standard of living, said John Friedman, an economics professor at Brown University.
Approximately 9 out of 10 kids born in 1940 ended up faring better than their parents as adults, one report found. As economic growth slowed, that share fell to 5 out of 10 by the 1980s.
For those born outside the United States, the American Dream meant possibility, the Gallup poll found. Seventy-two percent of those respondents associated it with “opportunity,” while 28 percent linked it to “stability.” (Among those who started their lives here, 47 percent saw opportunity and 53 percent imagined stability.)
Still, Americans are more likely than, say, Europeans to profess that someone who grew up poor could strike it big.
“We put up with a lot more inequality,” Friedman said, “but we also have a lot more business dynamism.”
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