Story at a glance
- Fewer adults in the U.S. believe that the American dream is true anymore.
- A new Pew Research Center survey found just 39 percent of young adults think the American dream is still possible.
- Older Americans, white Americans and those with high incomes are more likely to believe they have already achieved the American dream.
Nearly 60 percent of U.S. adults below age 50 believe the American dream is dead, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
The poll found that more specifically, 57 percent of adults between the ages of 30 and 49 think the American dream — or the idea that every American has the chance to make a better life for themselves —was once possible or was never possible.
Young adults, those 30 and under, are even more pessimistic about the future of American life, with 39 percent believing the American dream is still possible. That’s compared to the 60 percent of younger Americans who think it was once possible or was never possible, according to the 8,709-person survey.
Meanwhile, older adults — those aged 50 to 61 — are far more likely to believe in the American dream. Among those U.S. adults, 61 percent think achieving the American dream is still possible while 35 percent believe it was once possible and 3 percent think it was never possible, the research found.
Americans 65 and older are still more optimistic, with 68 percent believing the American dream is still possible while 29 percent think it was once possible and 2 percent believing it was never possible.
Opinions on whether the American dream is still possible vary by race, income, education and political party association, Pew found.
Americans with higher incomes are more likely to believe that the American dream is still achievable than those in middle- or lower-income brackets.
Roughly 64 percent of upper-income Americans believe the American dream still exists compared to 56 percent of middle-income Americans and 39 percent of lower-income American adults, according to Pew.
About half of Americans in each racial group noted by Pew — Black, white, Hispanic and Asian — believe the American dream is still possible.
About 5 percent of white, Hispanic and Asian American adults report believing that the American dream was never possible, according to the research. But the percentage of Black Americans who believe this is nearly twice as high at 11 percent.
U.S. adults with at least a college education are more likely to think upward mobility is still possible with 57 percent believing the American dream is still achievable. Meanwhile, 50 percent of Americans with less than a college-level education believe the American dream is still possible, Pew found.
That difference in opinion based on education level closely mirrors a difference in belief along political lines.
While 56 percent of Republicans and adults who are Republican-leaning believe the American dream is still attainable, 50 percent of adults who identify as Democrat or who are Democratic-leaning believe the same, per the survey.
Americans are also divided on whether they personally can achieve the American dream.
Pew found that about 30 percent of adults in the U.S. think they have already achieved the American dream and 36 percent believe they are on their way to achieving it.
Meanwhile, 30 percent think that the American dream is “out of reach” for them, which is nearly double the percentage of Americans that held this belief in 2017, according to Pew’s data.
White and Asian adults are far more likely to say they have already achieved the American dream than Black and Hispanic adults, the poll found.
Adults aged 65 and older, those with college educations, high incomes and Republican leaners are also far more likely to report having already achieved the American dream.
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