The first Gallup American Dream Study was conducted in 2024 with a nationally representative sample of more than 6,700 U.S. adults. Gallup’s survey presented two versions of the American Dream, posing the question, For you and your family, is the American Dream more about:
Stability – being able to support your family with a job and safe place to live.
Opportunity - being able to improve the quality of life for you and your family through education, better job opportunities and other resources.
Respondents were almost evenly split: 49% endorsed stability and 51% opportunity. Overall, 76% agreed that the American Dream is achievable, while 24% disagreed.
Earlier this year NORC at the University of Chicago conducted its latest American Dream survey, interviewing 1,527 adults. In this survey, respondents favored stability over opportunity versions of the Dream by a 4-to-1 margin:
When NORC framed the American Dream as a general rule - working hard leads to success or each generation will be better off than the last - respondents were deeply pessimistic. However, they were less gloomy about their own personal futures:
Oddly, NORC did not ask respondents in the 2025 survey whether they felt they had achieved or were achieving the American Dream. But a 2024 NORC survey did include that question and respondents were rather bullish: 61% felt they had achieved or were on the way to achieving their Dream. Yet even in NORC’s 2024 survey there were notes of pessimism: just 23% felt America’s best days were “ahead of us”.
One clear pattern did emerge from these two NORC surveys: respondents generally felt better about their own lives than about the country’s future.
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