Poll: Belief in the American Dream Is Fading Fast

Only 36% agree that anyone can get ahead through hard work
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 24, 2023 3:50 PM CST
Poll: Only 36% Still Believe in American Dream
Poll respondents said they're finding it harder to make ends meet and are worried about their financial outlook.   (Getty Images/irina88w)

Belief in the American dream is fading, with only 36% of respondents to a Wall Street Journal/NORC survey agreeing that anyone who works hard can get ahead. That's down from 53% who agreed with the sentiment in 2012 and 48% in 2016, the Journal reports. In the latest poll, 45% said the American dream once held true but doesn't now, while 18% said it was never true, up sharply from 4% in 2012. The poll revealed big divides on the issue: Only 28% of people under 50 agreed that anybody could get ahead through hard work, compared to 48% of over-65s. The figure was 46% for men and 28% for women.

Half the poll respondents said life in America is worse than it was 50 years ago, while 30% said it was better. The Hill reports that the survey comes at a time when the economy has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient, with unemployment numbers strong and inflation down months after economists predicted a recession. Poll respondents from both political parties said they felt their financial situation was increasingly precarious. "We have a nice house in the suburbs, and we have a two-car garage," Missouri resident Oakley Graham told the Journal. "But I'd be lying if I didn't say that money was tight."

Graham, a 30-year-old stay-at-home dad whose wife works as an electrical engineer, said life is "objectively worse" than 50 years ago because labor unions are weaker. Another Missouri resident, 78-year-old retired electrical inspector John Lasher, blamed inflation and the Biden administration for putting the American dream into what he said was the "past tense." "With inflation, you're working hard just to make ends meet, and then any extra work that you put in is just trying to get so you're not in the hole," he said. (More American dream stories.)

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