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How do factors in your life stack up to equal your "American Dream Score"?

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Spend five minutes taking this quiz, and you'll find out what factors were working in your favor and what you had to overcome to get where you are today. At the end, you'll receive an overall score and a personalized summary of the results (and probably a big dose of pride and gratitude).

Learn more about how this tool was created, related psychological research, and how our experiences shape our view of the "American Dream."

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What's Your American Dream Score? - Chasing the Dream

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Spend five minutes taking this quiz, and you'll find out what factors were working in your favor and what you had to overcome to get where you are today. At the end, you'll receive an overall score and a personalized summary of the results (and probably a big dose of pride and gratitude).

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Has It Drifted From the Vision of Our Founding Fathers?

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The American Dream is the idea that the government should protect each person's opportunity to pursue their idea of happiness.

The government protects the rights of you and every other American citizen to find their path to economic prosperity. Unlike many other countries, you are not required to follow your father's profession. Your destiny is not legally determined at birth by caste, religion, or gender. There is still discrimination, but the law protects your right to pursue a better life.

However, some wonder if the American Dream is dead or threatened. Let's examine the evidence by looking at its history.

The American Dream's Origins

The Declaration of Independence states the principles that underlie the American Dream: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."﻿﻿

The Founding Fathers based the U.S. Constitution-the highest law in the land-on these rights. Each person's desire to pursue happiness was not just self-indulgence, but also drove ambition and creativity. By legally protecting these values, the Founding Fathers created an attractive society for those aspiring to a better life.﻿﻿

The Declaration continues: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." For the drafters of the Declaration and later the Constitution, the American Dream could only thrive if it were not hindered by taxation without representation.﻿﻿

The people should have the right to elect officials to represent them. These leaders must abide by the laws themselves and not create new legislation without oversight. Legal disputes must be settled by a jury rather than by the whim of the leader.

How U.S. Presidents Shaped the American Dream

At first, the Founding Fathers only extended the Dream to white property owners.﻿﻿﻿ But the idea of inalienable rights was so powerful that laws were added to extend these rights to formerly enslaved people, women, and non-property owners. In this way, the American Dream changed the course of America itself.

For example, President Abraham Lincoln extended the American dream to formerly enslaved people with the Emancipation Proclamation, and President Woodrow Wilson supported women's voting rights, which led to the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in June 1919.

More presidential changes:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Roosevelt outlined an Economic Bill of Rights in his 1944 State of the Union address, defining the pursuit of happiness as decent housing, a good job, education, and health care.

President Harry S. Truman: Truman's "post-war social contract" included the GI Bill, providing government-funded college degrees for returning veterans. Truman's Fair Deal expanded the dream to include entitlement: If you worked hard and played by the rules, the government should guarantee financial security, education, health care, and a home.﻿﻿

President Lyndon B. Johnson: Johnson promoted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending segregation in the schools and protecting workers from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton supported the Dream of homeownership. President Barack Obama supported the legal benefits of the marriage contract regardless of sexual orientation. Obama furthered FDR's idea that everyone should have access to affordable health care. He softened the recession's blow for many by extending unemployment benefits and increasing government assistance for student loans.

The American Dream and Success

As we can see, throughout U.S. history, the definition of "happiness" has changed. In the Roaring 20s, the Founders' dream of protecting opportunities receded in favor of acquiring material things. In the novel "The Great Gatsby," author F. Scott Fitzgerald both defined the aspirations of the age and warned of its consequences.

Happiness based upon greed was not attainable because someone else always had more, he pointed out.﻿﻿ The stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression proved him right.

After the 1920s, many presidents supported the Gatsby Dream.

The American Dream's prosperity has also been a compelling vision for other nations, along with the idea that protecting citizens' rights to improve their lives is the best way to ensure national economic growth.﻿﻿

But the U.S has long had a setting conducive to prosperity, peace, and opportunity. For example, the United States has a large landmass under one government, benign neighbors, and abundant natural resources. These include oil and minerals, rainfall, and plenty of rivers. Long shorelines and a flat terrain ease transportation.

These conditions fostered a populace united by language, political system, and values, which allowed a diverse population to possess a competitive advantage. U.S. companies use that advantage to become more innovative, with a large, diverse, and easily accessible test market for new and niche products.

Today, this approach extends to private enterprise and a free-market economy in the U.S., which depends on the free flow of information. It also supports free trade agreements and foreign direct investment.

The American Dream: Is it Dead?

Several factors are challenging the American Dream's continued viability. Including:

Low mobility: The United States has lower rates of income mobility than other developed countries. America scores lower than France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Denmark.﻿﻿

Government debt: The U.S. has $27 trillion in federal debt and $4 trillion in consumer debt. Combined, that's much more than the U.S. gross domestic product of $21 trillion.﻿﻿

Climate change: Some people feel their vision of the American dream is threatened by solutions like the Green New Deal. But if nothing is done, global warming will slow growth. Between 2007 and 2017, extreme weather, health risks, sea-level rise, and food inflation, have cost the U.S. government $350 billion.﻿﻿

Some point to social trends as proof that the American Dream has died, including epidemics of obesity, child abuse, and drug addiction.

A "New" American Dream?

Global economic conditions have indeed changed. But the Founding Fathers never intended the American Dream to provide world dominance and the guarantee of a good life. The Declaration of Independence says nothing about a particular lifestyle and doesn't define how happiness should look.

Our Founding Fathers' vision sought to ensure that everyone has equal opportunity to pursue their vision of happiness. It also promotes faith in private free enterprise as a way to pursue that happiness. All people have an equal and inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness. Federal law protects this right.

Many are turning to a new definition of the American dream that better reflects the country's values for which it was named. In her book The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream, Courtney E. Martin writes that Americans should "return to some of the most basic ... questions: What is enough money? How do we want to spend our finite energy and attention? What makes us feel accountable and witnessed?" She suggests you should aspire to create "a life you can be genuinely proud of, an 'examined life' (in the words of dead Greek guys), a life that you are challenged by, a life that makes you giddy, that sometimes surprises you, a life that you love."﻿﻿

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How Our Founding Fathers Protected the American Dream

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The American Dream is the idea that the government should protect each person's opportunity to pursue their idea of happiness. The government protects the rights of you and every other American citizen to find their path to economic prosperity. Unlike many other countries, you are not required to follow your father's profession.

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As you read, consider the nature of an article labeled with "Opinion" vs. some of the other resources here. Although we might think of opinion as less credible, are there valid arguments made here that are based on facts? What are your thoughts?

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Opinion | The American Dream Is Alive and Well (Published 2019)

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Most people in this country say that they are living it — but what they mean by the phrase might surprise you.

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Article: Why the original meaning of the American Dream is unrecognizable today

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Article: Why the original meaning of the American Dream is unrecognizable today

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What is the American Dream? The ever-changing definition of it might surprise you nearly as much as what it used to mean.

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Why the original meaning of the American Dream is unrecognizable today

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What is the American Dream? The ever-changing definition of it might surprise you nearly as much as what it used to mean.

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Article: Can We Save The American Dream? 

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Article: Can We Save The American Dream? 

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The article below is a high-level read, but discusses many of the economic factors involved in the American Dream today and whether or not it can be saved.

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Several major reports came out during the past couple of months, notably a report from Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce, the OECD 2019 Skills Report: Thriving in a Digital World, and the new initiatives by the College Board to account for structural disadvantages, which, taken together, should be the tsunami warning bell that I have been trying to ring for more than decade. The American dream has been on life support for a generation, and without intervention it may be unrecoverable. We are at the edge of the chasm between the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolution. In the Third Industrial Revolution, we needed workers trained in technical skills to build out the infrastructure for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We lunged at STEM skills and focused on education that we could prove through standardized testing. In this era, the higher-education-to-industry factory pipeline worked for people with the required degrees. We pushed more and more people through that pipeline, with a focus on monolithic degrees at increasing cost. We failed to pay attention to the ways in which technology was supplanting workers. Fewer workers could produce more. Those without higher levels of education, notably men with only a high school diploma, dropped out of the workforce, many of them into mental health crises, and there have been more deaths of despair. The Wall Street Journal just published an article entitled "Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class." Cars, college, houses and healthcare have become considerably more expensive, with consumer debt, not counting mortgages, currently at $4 trillion-higher than it has ever been, even after adjusting for inflation. Simultaneously, for two decades incomes have been stagnant. Pew Research reports that between 1971 to 2011 we lost about 10% of the middle class.

I believe that if we act immediately, we may be able to resuscitate the American dream. The challenge is that what worked in past industrial revolutions will not work in the next one. We must think differently, both to prepare the next generation for the future of work and to triage current workers to determine the best courses of intervention to help them adapt to a work world for which they have not been prepared.

Origin of the Term "American Dream" and Building the Middle Class

In 1931, author James Truslow Adams coined the term "American dream" in his book The Epic of America, in which he says that "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth. We have long taken this to mean that the American dream is doing better than one's parents. The American dream is securing a stable place in the middle class or higher. The American dream is home ownership or some other determinant of stability. Relatively speaking, we have not had a middle class for all that long. The Second Industrial Revolution and the post-WW2 boom built our middle class as mass manufacturing changed the way we lived our lives and launched our consumer society. In that period, we also created work as a concept separate from home, and the fixed occupational identity was born.

Loss of Social Mobility

Recent research by Raj Chetty has found that if you were born in 1940, you had a 90% chance of doing better than your parents; if you were born in 1984, that chance dropped to 50%. While the 1940 cohort is perhaps unusual in that it enjoyed an unprecedented economic post-WW2 economic boom, even the 1950s cohort showed higher rates of mobility (see chart). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently released a report that revealed that the middle class is shrinking across all developed countries but even more so in the United States. While we have lifted developing nations out of poverty and established their middle classes, ours has eroded.

Rising Income Inequality in the United States; Declining Income Inequality Globally

The US economy is in new territory, and while most celebrate the new stock market milestones and the lowest unemployment rate in fifty years, a closer look reveals a more textured picture. Not everyone is doing well. According to research by Stanford Graduate School of Business professor and economist Paul Oyer, "Times are good if you are college educated and working in the right industries in the right locations. But the last 50 years have been terrible for people with lower skills. Adjusted for inflation, the average earnings of a man who didn't go to college is lower now than it was 50 years ago. That's unheard of." And more specifically, Professor Oyer notes that we reduced income inequality globally while increasing it in the United States. "The low-wage jobs that left here are considered really good jobs in China. [Globally] we've lifted a billion, two billion people out of poverty over the past 30 years," Oyer wrote. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, faculty members at the MIT Sloan School of Management, have studied the relationship between technology and the economy for years. Their efforts culminated in a seminal book, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies,in which they chronicle how digital technologies are contributing to the stagnation of wages. Specifically, Brynjolfsson explains in a 2015 Harvard Business Review interview, "In the 1980s, however, the growth in median income began to sputter. In the past 15 years it's turned negative; once you adjust for inflation, an American household at the 50th percentile of income distribution earns less today than it did in 1998, even after accounting for changes in household size. Job growth in the private sector has also slowed-and not just because of the 2008 recession. Job gains were anemic throughout the 2000s, even when the economy was expanding. This phenomenon is what we call the Great Decoupling. The two halves of the cycle of prosperity are no longer married: Economic abundance, as exemplified by GDP and productivity, has remained on an upward trajectory, but the income and job prospects for typical workers have faltered." Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1945 to 1973 the top 1% captured 4.9% of all income growth, while from 1973 to 2007, more than 58% of income growth went to the top 1%, and since the global financial crisis the top 1%'s share of income growth has held steady at more than 40%.

Socioeconomic Status Is Now Not Earned but Rather Inherited

According to the Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce Report Born to Win, Schooled To Lose , "[an advantaged] kindergartener with test scores in the bottom half has a 7 in 10 chance of reaching high socioeconomic status among his or her peers as a young adult, while a disadvantaged kindergartener with top-half test scores only has a 3 in 10 chance." Students who fall behind stay behind because "advantaged students have safety nets to keep them on track. Because less-advantaged peers do not, they are more likely to fall behind and stay behind. Among children who show similar academic potential in kindergarten, the test scores of economically disadvantaged students are more likely to decline and stay low during elementary, middle, and high school than the test scores of their high-SES peers." Those students with lower socioeconomic status (SES) complete higher education at much lower rates than their higher-SES peers. Social mobility is lost, and with it a tremendous amount of human potential. Professor Oyer weighs in on this as well: "The big payoffs are early interventions. Getting kids into preschool, having them not fall behind. There's a lot of evidence that by third grade, some kids are far behind and never catch up. For a lot of children, when they're 8 years old, it's too late. If your parents aren't engaged in the education system, in 10 years you'll be competing in the labor market against people whose parents sent them to violin lessons and summer programs in the Dominican Republic. There's inequality of opportunity."

Massification of Higher Education: The Monolithic Degree

As we moved from the Second to the Third Industrial Revolution, we suddenly needed a skilled and trained labor force educated beyond high school. Simultaneously, we began the long task of creating a more perfect union through the women's movement, civil rights movement, and GI Bill, which stimulated the supply side of the now more diverse and more educated labor force. In this phase, 1960 to 1990, we doubled the number of higher education institutions in the United States. Following this expansion, everyone jumped onto the gravy train: magazines that offered university rankings; textbook publishers who could increase prices at double the rate of inflation; institutions of higher education who could increase tuition above inflation because student loan solutions emerged, pushing the pain down the road. The return on investment for higher education justified the costs until, perhaps, that came into question. During the massification period, higher education became myopically focused on monolithic degrees. "Pick a good major" was advice that, when followed, guaranteed a good, stable ride up the career escalator. Universities trained students in a single skill set, in a single industry, and if they attained a decent starting salary, their schools could declare success. This all worked until somewhere between the dot-com bust and the global financial crisis, when the assets leveraged to fund that future salary depreciated and, simultaneously, technological capability extended the leverage of the knowledge worker such that few single-skill-set workers were needed. And now, we have unmet needs for a highly educated workforce in fields like data analytics and cybersecurity, yet we have a huge number of students graduating with debt and degrees they cannot monetize because the skills they were taught are outdated and irrelevant. Further, we have focused almost exclusively on training people in technical skills with the false promise that they would be able to leverage that training for their entire career rather than as a starting point in a long arc of lifelong learning. Additionally, the greatest skills gaps today are not technical, they are social, and we not developing the uniquely human skills we need in the workforce. Research by David Deming found that jobs with high math skills and low social skills have been on the decline for decades, while the number of jobs requiring high social skills and low math skills has been increasing in almost an inverse correlation. Our systems of education and development are not clued into this need at all.

K-12 as Workforce Prep = Disengagement

In our efforts to improve education in this country we may be shooting ourselves in the foot. We are myopically focused on proving learning, but that which can be proven is also that which is easy to automate. Our rush to push children through summative testing (by teaching to the test) is rapidly diminishing their engagement at a time when we most need young people to adapt habits that will enable lifelong learning. Gallup studies engagement, and it found that as children progress through primary school, middle school and high school, they become increasingly disengaged. This is a profound loss of human potential.

Potential Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

According to Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum, we have now entered the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is marked by the merging of biological, cyber, and physical systems. The First Industrial Revolution was fueled by the steam engine; the Second was run on electrification, mass production, and division of labor; and the Third is marked by computerization and the automation of physical labor. Our systems of learning were formed to train farm workers to be factory workers in the First and Second Industrial Revolutions and have changed little since. The past two or three Industrial Revolutions required a trained and deployable workforce and for them we built systems of learning that would codify and transfer existing knowledge and preselected skills. Through a combination of globalization and technological change, products, services, and business models are rapidly changing, requiring new skills, new talents, and, many conclude, new workers. The fill-and-spill model of hiring for past skills and experience is becoming truly Sisyphean, since many of the skills we need are just emerging, and we don't have the luxury of the seven to ten years we need to develop training and transfer those skills and knowledge into a new set of workers. The Fourth Industrial Revolution may be most notable for the (predicted) waves of technological unemployment of knowledge workers, because anything mentally routine or predictable may soon be achievable by an algorithm. In this reality, the value of having stored knowledge may diminish in favor of the ability to work in flows of information, form new knowledge, and/or create the most meaning from processes handled by technology. Computers are very good at answering specific questions and, thus far, very bad at deciphering intent, inferring meaning, and offering judgment. It seems, then, that it is no mistake that almost every work-skills-of-the-future list is focused on nontechnical and uniquely human skills (sometimes called soft skills). These are exactly the skills left out of our current education-to-work factory pipeline, where we have favored lunging at rapidly expiring technology skills and focusing on only that which we can measure-which is also exactly that which we can automate.

Dunning-Kruger Effect Meets the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Often people who are most vulnerable to being displaced by (rendered unemployed by) technology are the least aware of their exposure. This brings to mind the famed Dunning-Kruger Effect of then-Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, which states that the less competent you are, the less able you are to accurately assess your abilities. This seems to be applicable to our current challenging shift in the workforce. We need to simultaneously up-skill our people to a baseline of digital fluency, orient them toward lifelong learning and adaptation, and encourage them to develop their uniquely human skills (soft skills), such as communication, creativity, empathy, and judgment. A study by Swinburne University's Centre for the New Workforce in Australia found, "The more an industry is disrupted by digital technologies, the more that workers in those industries value uniquely human 'social competencies.'" These are the exact skills we are not paying attention to right now in either education or the workforce. From collaboration, empathy, and social skills to entrepreneurial skills, these social competencies are less vulnerable to being displaced by AI and automation and thus more likely to enhance a worker's resilience to the changing nature of the market.

A study commissioned by the freelancing platform Upwork titled " Freelancing in America: 2017" found that 65% of freelancers are updating their skills, yet only 45% of full-time employees are doing the same. So those most affected by the winds of change and those most in need of updated skills to do their daily jobs, or gigs, are, at the moment, the most prepared.This leads me to believe that there remains a tremendous amount of work to do to prepare the entire workforce for the necessary changes as, according to McKinsey's report Digital America: Tales of The Haves and Have-Mores, we have digitized less than 20% of our economy. MIT Technology Review created a chart tracking all the predictions on job loss and change brought on by advances in technology, and labor predictive analytics platform Faethm created a graphic of this data (below).

Enter Longevity and Accelerated Change

While income inequality is widening, social mobility is stalled, socioeconomic status is largely inherited, and we are facing intense pressure from accelerating technological change that will upend jobs and reshape work, there is one more change requiring adaptation: we are living longer-a lot longer. We have made the most significant leaps in human longevity in the last few decades and we are living longer and thus working longer through more change cycles.

My Thesis: Work to Learn

The future of work is both learning and adapting. Learning, framed as education, has long focused on "becoming educated," which meant acquiring predetermined skills and existing knowledge such that students were able to secure a job and step on the career escalator. Or, said differently, we learned, once, in order to work. Now we are moving into a world of work, notably as we cross into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where anything mentally or physically routine or predictable may be better achieved by an algorithm or some form of physical or knowledge-based automation. In this reality, my colleague Chris Shipley and I believe we need to learn how to learn so that we can "work to learn" and adapt for the rest of our-now much longer-careers. While it has long been believed that learning is best for the young because of brain plasticity, new research suggests that while some capabilities, such as fluid intelligence, peak in youth, other abilities, notably those required for the top skills of the future, peak after the age of 40.

Rebuilding the American Dream

A number of factors contributed to where are today, but the question is, where are we going? I am not a policy expert, so I will leave the answers to others more qualified, but I do think we are framing our challenges with the rear-view mirror rather than the windshield. Somewhere in the Third Industrial Revolution, humans shifted from assets to develop to costs to contain, and in that period we dramatically underinvested in human capital. In that same period, higher education, for those lucky enough to have access to it, became "pick a good major, get a good job, and ride the career escalator up." This promise, articulated in this way, is gone. At the same time, we became myopically focused on wealth preservation-keeping, in the present, as much as possible of our value created in the past. This has been called the shareholder value era. We focused on extracting and preserving value rather than creating it. Those with the right degrees and/or the right skills enjoyed returns. Those without the right skills or without access to them stagnated, at best. Across the board, we stopped investing in humans. We allowed structural barriers to human potential to emerge. We stopped taking longer strides. At this inflection point, we need our dreams to focus, not right in front of us, but on the horizon-in other words, we need generation- or multi-generation-long dreams. We need to focus not on how we preserve wealth but how we invest in the next generations to create the taxpayers of the future. Where do we invest and how do we dream if our goal becomes maximizing human potential? For this, I truly believe, the future of work is learning, which to be realized requires, among other things, early interventions, universal preschool, and systems that support lifelong learning, because evidence suggests that various cognitive capacities peak throughout the whole, now much longer, arc of our lives. This is a new deal. This new deal will require corporate and government investment in lifelong learning and changes in our individual expectations. To learn is now everyone's individual responsibility. To do anything less would be a loss of human potential and economic opportunity. To do anything less would be to stop aspiring to be a more perfect union. To do anything less would be un-American.

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Several major reports came out during the past couple of months, notably a report from Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce, the OECD 2019 Skills Report: Thriving in a Digital World, and the new initiatives by the College Board to account for structural disadvantages, which, taken together, should be the tsunami warning bell that I have been trying to ring for more than decade.

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Topline: Amid rising inequality and thinning of the middle class over the past three decades, new survey evidence shows that there is overwhelming enthusiasm among Gen Z and Millennials: 79% of them report that they believe their lives will be at least as good as their parents'. Blacks and Hispanics are especially optimistic about their futures, providing new grounds for optimism in the American Dream.

We've routinely heard the bad news about growing inequality, thinning of the middle class, and declining in integenerational mobility. But, could the tide be changing among Gen Z and Millennials? New evidence says yes, suggesting that the American Dream is far from over among our youth, offering an important perspective as we appreciate and remember Columbus Day during this atypical year.
New Survey Evidence Offers Optimism
A recent survey on a sample of 4,004 respondents (2,002 for Gen Z and 2,002 for Millennials), commissioned by the Walton Foundation and fielded by Dynata between June 17-26, offers additional optimism: 85% of Gen Z respondents believe that they will be the same as or better off than their parents (and 74% of Millennials). Only 8% and 16% believe they will be worse off than their parents.

When you partition further, you find that 83% of those between ages 13-17 say that they believe they can achieve the "American dream," whereas it's 61% among those between ages 18-23 and 24-31.

And, while some might think that optimism about the future is split by race, the results actually go in the opposite direction: Blacks and Hispanics are the most likely to expect that they are going to have a better life than their parents. For example, whereas only 42% of Whites expect they will have a life that is better than their parents, 59% and 57% of Blacks and Hispanics, respectively, think that they will.

Importantly, the American dream is becoming less of a homogeneous construct and more about opportunity. For example, one survey respondent remarked that "the American dream is not about the items but the opportunity you have." Similarly, another remarked that "the American dream promises a chance at equal opportunity, essentially granting you freedom and social and economic mobility without restrictions." There is no one-size-fits-all opportunity.

The definition of opportunity is changing. For example, it has less to do about financial well-being and more to do with autonomy. Indeed, Millennials are much less likely to own homes, reflecting, in part, a desire for greater geographic mobility and autonomy over the stereotypical "white picket fence home." For example, 20% said that "freedom, choosing whatever you want to be, the life you want" ranked as the most important reason for their choice. Although 19% said financial well-being, it's noteworthy that they are tied.

These survey results are also consistent with a more comprehensive evaluation by Michael Strain in his recently-published book, The American Dream is Not Dead. He shows, for example, that after accounting for taxes and transfers, together with inflation, the American worker's standard of living has improved quite a bit. Moreover, there's been a lot of upward mobility into high-tech services, which is consistent with my research on the expansion of the digital labor force.
Press Forward In The Face Of Uncertainty
Admittedly, COVID-19 has made life more challenging. 20% said that the pandemic has made it a lot harder to succeed in life, but 42% and 30% said that it only made it a little or not at all harder.

Nonetheless, the good news is that the pandemic has not fundamentally altered individuals' sense of optimism about the future: 66% believe that it is a transient shock. One respondent remarked that: "COVID-19 has caused people in my generation to modify their path towards their goals and may have hindered some in the short term, but I don't think it will ultimately determine if they are successful or not."

That's not to say there are not important challenges on the horizon, ranging from access to educational investments and a more egalitarian society. But, there's never been a time without challenges: what matters is that we have the will to press forward and be part of the solution.

Gen Z and Millennials teach us the importance of having childlike faith about the future. Even when we've tried something that didn't work out, that shouldn't shake our confidence in the future. We need to be persistent and resilient. As we reflect on Columbus Day during this atypical year, let's remember that the same entrepreneurial spirit that has driven our country to new heights is still within our reach-and much more if we only continue to press forward.

... Read More

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The American Dream Lives On, As 80% Of Millenials Expect Same Or Better Lifestyle Than Parents

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Topline: Amid rising inequality and thinning of the middle class over the past three decades, new survey evidence shows that there is overwhelming enthusiasm among Gen Z and Millennials: 79% of them report that they believe their lives will be at least as good as their parents'.

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Article: The Transformation of the American Dream

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Article: The Transformation of the American Dream

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How has the American Dream changed over time and what does it mean today?

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The Transformation of the ‘American Dream’ (Published 2017)

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It wasn’t originally about owning a beautiful home and a roaring business. It meant freedom, mutual respect and equality of opportunity.

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Infographic: 15 Facts About U.S. Inequality That Everyone Should Know

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Infographic: 15 Facts About U.S. Inequality That Everyone Should Know

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Many of the articles about the American Dream reference inequality as a major factor in the attainability of it. View this infographic for facts and statistics about inequality in the U.S.

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Video: Do Millenials Have It Harder Than Other Generations? 

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Video: Do Millenials Have It Harder Than Other Generations? 

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You may not technically be a "millenial", but this comparison of Millenials to other generations calls into question: do today's generations have more to contend with as they try to achieve the American Dream? Think about how the factors described in this video might affect your future, as well.

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Do millennials have it harder than other generations?

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Article: Teenagers Are Losing Faith in the American Dream

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Article: Teenagers Are Losing Faith in the American Dream

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Learn how views on the American Dream today compare to high school seniors in the 1990's. As you read, consider: What are some of the key differences? Do you agree with the things said in the article? How much faith do *you* have in the American Dream?

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Compared to their counterparts in recent years, high-school seniors in the mid-1990s appeared to have more faith in social mobility and less confidence in the power of having money.

Eric Thayer / Reuters

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Teenagers Are Losing Faith in the American Dream

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Compared to their counterparts in recent years, high-school seniors in the mid-1990s appeared to have more faith in social mobility and less confidence in the power of having money.

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Gen Z and Millennials on "The American Dream" 

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Gen Z and Millennials on "The American Dream" 

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Do Generation Z and Millennials expect to be worse or better off than their parents? Do they think they will succeed in life and experience the American Dream? What do they believe will help them succeed?

Contrary to much of today's conventional wisdom, young people-especially youth of color-are optimistic about their futures and believe they will succeed in life. They also believe in and think they will achieve the American Dream, defined on their terms. And they say education plays a key role in helping them unlock opportunity, create a better life, and reach that dream.

More than 4,000 U.S. respondents ages 13 to 23 (Gen Z) and 24 to 39 (Millennials) were surveyed in late June 2020 by Echelon Insights on their attitudes and thoughts concerning the American Dream, along with issues like education and their community.

Perhaps the most striking attitude of these young people is their faith in the work ethic. More than eight in ten-81 percent-think that "If I work hard, I...will...succeed in life". Hard work not only brings success, seven in ten (71 percent) believe it allows them to move up the economic ladder.

This belief is affected by household income. Those with higher incomes are more likely to believe this than those with lower incomes. Still, more than six in ten (62 percent) of those making less than $30,000 believe they will move up the economic ladder.

Nearly eight in ten (79 percent) believe their individual lives will be better (49 percent) or the same (30 percent) as their parents-though Gen Z are more optimistic than Millennials (85 percent versus 74 percent).

Of those who think they will have a better life (49 percent), nearly half (49 percent) credit this belief to having improved and different opportunities than their parents, especially educational opportunities.

Of those who think their life will be worse than their parents (13 percent), nearly half (44 percent) give economic reasons as the key impediment.

Gen Z and Millennials of color are more likely than whites (57 percent versus 42 percent) to think they will have a better life than their parents.

On the other hand, nearly two in three (60 percent) Black Gen Z and Millennials see racial inequality as either "extremely" or "very" big problems that will keep them from pursing opportunity. Four in ten (40 percent) Hispanics and Asians and around one in four (26 percent) whites answer in a similar fashion.

What of the American Dream?

Overall, two in three (67 percent) believe that individually they have the opportunity to achieve it. A similar percentage of Gen Z and Millennials across racial and ethnic groups believe they are as likely as whites to realize it.

These young people were asked in an open-ended question to define the American Dream. Their answers were clustered under 18 categories. The top five were: freedom, especially to choose whatever one wants to be (20 percent); financial well-being (19 percent); family (15 percent); good job or career (14 percent); and housing (14 percent).

Focus group interviews with nearly 150 individuals provide more details on what the American Dream means to these young people. In responses similar to the top category of the open-ended question, they describe it as having the freedom and opportunity to build their life on their own terms.

Many used the word "opportunity" to define what it means. For them, opportunity is about creating many pathways to success. The opportunity structure they envision is pluralistic, running counter to the view that there is a "one size fits all" definition of success.

When asked about what might help them have the opportunity to live a better life, respondents were given 13 possible answers. The top three "extremely" or "very important" responses were family (83 percent), environment (74 percent), and public schools (72 percent).

So the school as a key local, community institution plays an essential role in making the American Dream a reality.

Nearly seven in ten (68 percent) believe education beyond high school is needed for getting ahead and having good opportunities in life. But over four in ten (43 percent) say higher education is too expensive or hard to access.

Less than half (46 percent) believe their K-12 education prepared them "extremely" or "very well" for good opportunities in life. In particular, young adults who did not pursue higher education are the least upbeat about their own high school education.

Almost three in four (77 percent) say they would now include career or job skills and basic financial skills as major priorities that schools should teach by high school graduation.

What makes for a good community in which to live and opens doors to opportunity?

When asked to choose the two or three items from a list of nine, they respond: affordable cost of living (56 percent); good job opportunities (49 percent); and good environment, as in clean air and water (39 percent). Good schools (32 percent) are fifth on the list.

How does Covid-19 affect their views?

Two in three (62 percent) believe that it's made success in life a "lot" or "little" harder. Nearly four in ten (39 percent) think that after having an effect for a few years, "we will get past it." Around a quarter (27 percent) believe it will cause permanent change.

What are we to make of this?

The American Dream is portrayed in two ways in this survey. One narrative is relative, defined in terms of others-being better or worse financially or in other ways than one's parents, moving past some individuals, up the success ladder. The other is absolute, defined in terms of one's self-choosing whatever one wants to do, a good job opportunity, my family.

Both narratives are present in the survey answers and reflections of these young people. But the open-ended questions and focus group discussions favor the absolute view.

The new American Dream Gen Z and Millennials are pursuing emphasizes freedom and the opportunity to build one's own life on one's own terms. Opportunity is not a "one size fits all" description of success. Rather, opportunity pluralism abounds-there are many pathways to success. Opportunity is about building the life one wants in a local community that's affordable, has good jobs, and a clean environment. And education-while in need of change-unlocks the door to opportunity and the American Dream.
Bruno V. Manno is senior advisor for K-12 education reform with the Walton Family Foundation. The survey was conducted by Echelon Insights and commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation. Echelon retained control over survey development, administration, and reporting.

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Generation Z and Millennials Believe in the American Dream, New Survey Finds

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Do Generation Z and Millennials expect to be worse or better off than their parents? Do they think they will succeed in life and experience the American Dream? What do they believe will help them succeed? Contrary to much of today's conventional wisdom, young people-especially youth of color-are optimistic about their futures and believe they will succeed in life.

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Immigrant perspectives on the American Dream

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Immigrant perspectives on the American Dream

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🗽 Immigrant Perspectives: The American Dream

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Safeshare links for the YouTube videos on this Padlet in case your computer is blocking Youtube.

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His take on why the American Dream is a myth.

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Check out this two minute discussion of arguments on both sides of this debate.

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Check out what the American Dream means to different people in this short clip. After watching, check out some of the other clips to see what others have to say about their American Dream scores and the results of this quiz.

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American Dream Score: What is the American Dream? | Chasing the Dream

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WNET employees discuss their interpretation of the American Dream Scores.

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Is the American Dream real and attainable? See John Green's take as he breaks it all down in this fast-paced discussion of various factors.