(TNND) — Support for the American dream is strong as we approach the 250th anniversary of our founding, even though a new report from Gallup and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream shows pessimism that the dream is achievable for most.
A survey conducted earlier this year and published by Gallup on Thursday showed 78% of Americans see the American dream as worth striving for, unchanged over the last couple of years.
And most people, 69%, think the American dream is within reach for them.
But fewer than half of people, 46%, think everyone in the country has a real shot at the American dream.
Both measures of the American dream’s accessibility have declined since 2024, even though Americans are just as bullish on the concept overall.
Emily Mitzner, with the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, said they also asked people if the American dream has been a success or failure as we approach the 250th anniversary.
“There’s a healthy majority across party, across demographic, who are saying, we have work to do,” Mitzner said. “Collectively, we need to do something to make sure that this dream is still available and achievable for people across the country.”
Regardless of political affiliation, around 60% of Americans see the dream as unfinished.
Just 16% of Americans score the dream as a success, compared to 26% who deem it a failure.
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say the American dream has succeeded, 31% to just 7%, respectively.
Mitzner said they asked people an open-ended question to describe what the American dream means to them.
The responses mostly boiled down to a sense of freedom and opportunity.
“I think that there’s this idea that the American dream is this very specific defined thing about homeownership or upward mobility,” Mitzner said. “And it’s actually quite a bit more complex. Most people actually talk about freedom and rights as the primary question. That’s true in this survey.”
Peter Loge, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, said the American dream has always been a bit nebulous.
“You know, it’s ephemeral. That’s the nature of dreams,” Loge said. “But it is interesting when Gallup asked the open-ended question, how many people agreed on sort of its broad contours. And that so many agreed that the dream itself wasn’t an object like a house but was an idea like freedom.”
FILE – Six-year-old Rahel Williams holds up a United States flag during a ceremony where she and 24 other children became U.S. citizens at the Sully Historic Site May 21, 2010, in Chantilly, Virginia. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Indeed, a third of survey respondents said the American dream was about freedom or individual rights.
Another 28% said it was about financial security or homeownership, broadly speaking.
And another 18% said the dream was about success and upward mobility.
First-generation migrants were more likely to view the American dream through the lens of opportunity, while native-born Americans viewed it as being more about stability.
Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and at the University of Southern California, said our nation’s 250th anniversary is an ideal time to refocus on the American dream.
Political polarization may have tarnished the American dream, but not irreparably, Schnur said.
“This poll shows that while the path to the American dream is damaged, it’s certainly repairable,” he said. “And … there is a broad agreement on some of these concepts. The challenge is deciding which of these goals are the most important ones.”
Mitzner said the American dream is just as relevant as it’s ever been as we approach the milestone anniversary.
And she said it remains an ideal worth striving for.
Loge said Americans just want a fair shot at achieving the dream, showing they still value it even with the challenges they see in achieving it.
“Reading this made me feel pretty good,” he said. “The American people still believe in an idea, and they believe that idea is worth pursuing, even if they think that people in power have rigged the deck against them.”