What American Dream?

A year ago there was real concern that the U.S. economy might fall into what economists consider a depression. That type of depression did not happen, but our polling finds strong evidence of another kind of depression: a loss of faith in the American Dream.

Zogby International has been testing the public’s beliefs and definitions of the American Dream for more than a decade. Our latest Zogby Interactive survey shows a significant decline in believers from a year ago and an even bigger drop from 10 years ago.

On the basic question of whether “it is possible for you and your family to achieve the American Dream,” 57% said it is possible in a Feb. 17 Zogby Interactive poll of 2,031 likely voters. That is a 10-point drop from a similar survey conducted immediately after the 2008 elections. When we asked that question in July 2001, less than two months before the Sept. 11 attacks, 76% said they could achieve it.

As some readers may know, I’ve studied people’s attitudes about the American Dream at length. It served as the subtitle of my book, The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report of the Transformation of the American Dream. I have found the American Dream evolving and enduring. In that book, I wrote:

“The American dream still exists; it’s not going anywhere. But in so many ways, it’s being refashioned and repackaged to reflect the new circumstances of so many of our lives … The new American dream, I’ve found, is far more textured because the American experience at the start of the 21st century is so different from what it was just a half century ago. We still dream great things for our children, but today we do so within the context of the new limits in our own lives.”

Our standard set of questions about the American Dream measures those “new circumstances” and “textured” ideals. From these questions, I’ve formulated four categories of American Dreamers: Traditional Materialists who define it as material success; Secular Spiritualists, who see it more through spiritual fulfillment; Deferred Dreamers, who believe their children are more likely to attain it than they are; and finally the Dreamless Dead, who say neither they nor most middle-class Americans can achieve it materially or spiritually.

Source:  Forbes