NEW YORK, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) — Americans overwhelmingly desire all the traditional trappings of the American dream — owning a home, having a family, and looking forward to a comfortable retirement, but very few believe they can easily achieve it, a July Wall Street Journal (WSJ)/NORC poll of 1,502 U.S. adults has shown.
A stark gap emerged between people’s wishes and their expectations, said the newspaper in its report on Wednesday. “The trend was consistent across gender and party lines, but held more true for younger generations, who have been priced out of homeownership and saddled with high interest rates and student debt.”
While 89 percent of respondents said owning a home is either essential or important to their vision of the future, only 10 percent said homeownership is easy or somewhat easy to achieve. Financial security and a comfortable retirement were similarly labeled as essential or important by 96 percent and 95 percent of people, respectively, but rated as easy or somewhat easy to pull off by only 9 percent and 8 percent.
Twelve years ago, when researchers at the 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.
“By many measures, economists say, people are right to feel that their shot at success has diminished,” noted the report.
