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A Wall Street Journal/NORC poll published in late August found that barely a third of U.S. adults believe the American dream is still attainable.
A WSJ/NORC poll of 1,502 adults found that only a third of Americans still believe in what our forefathers built this country to create: the American dream. “Twelve years ago, when researchers at Public Religion Research Institute asked 2,501 people if the American dream “still holds true,” more than half said it did. When The Wall Street Journal asked the same question in July, that dropped to about a third of respondents,” WSJ wrote in their analysis. (TAKE A POLL: Do You Feel Confident About the Current State of the Economy?)
This decline in overall morale for the nation coincides with the sad realization that, under our current economic trajectory, most Americans don’t feel they’ll ever be financially secure or own their own home. Only 10% of respondents believed that owning a property was “easy or somewhat easy.” With 89% saying homeownership is “essential or important to their vision of the future,” we now have a major social metric that dictates perceptions of success in the U.S. right now.
There Is A Major Problem
“Even as mortgage interest rates were rising, home prices reached the highest level ever on the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index,” CBS News reported in late August. “On a three-month running average ended in June, prices nationally were 5.4% higher than they were in June 2023.”
Real estate investors are part of the problem, having purchasing 26.1% of low-priced U.S. homes in the fourth quarter of 2023, Redfin reported. This is the highest share ever and represents a 24% increase from the year prior. (TAKE A POLL: Is the Government Doing Enough to Address Unemployment?)
Americans no longer feel they are doing better than their parents did. Most people note things like buying a home, starting a family, supporting that family on a single income, are just not possible for a growing share of today’s young people. We don’t just mean kids. People in their 30s and 40s also struggle with fundamental aspects of the American dream. So, what is the solution?
How Do You Feel?
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