Percentage of ‘thriving’ Americans slightly tops Great Recession, first pandemic year: Gallup
Just more than half of Americans were evaluated to be “thriving” in 2023, which is only slightly above the percentage of thriving Americans during the Great Recession and the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new poll.
The new Gallup poll found that 52.1 percent of Americans evaluated their lives positively enough in 2023 to be considered thriving. This is a dip from 2022 and 2021, where Gallup considered 52.8 percent and 55 percent of Americans to be thriving, respectively.
The only years when the share of thriving Americans was lower were 2008-09 during the Great Recession, at 50.2 percent, and in 2020, at 50.1 percent.
Gallup classifies Americans as “thriving,” “struggling” or “suffering,” depending on how they evaluate their current and future lives on a scale between 0 and 10. Those who rate their current lives a 7 or higher and who rate their lives in five years as 8 or higher are considered thriving.
The percentage of those classified as “suffering” was a near-high in 2023 at 4.7 percent, slightly below the 2022 high of 4.8 percent.
Gallup noted that the thriving rate dropped among independents and Republicans, while the rate for Democrats remained stable,
“Electorally, the drop in the thriving percentage — particularly among independents — is potentially bad news for Joe Biden’s reelection chances in 2024. Prior research involving data from 599 U.S. counties showed a strong link between low or declining life ratings and shifts from Democratic support in 2012 to Republican support in 2016 in the U.S. presidential elections,” Gallup wrote.
The most recent survey for the last quarter of 2023 included responses from 6,386 adults from Nov. 30 to Dec. 8 and has a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points.
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