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What is the American Dream Today & How it’s Changed

Home » Learning » What is the American Dream Today & How it’s Changed

Kathy Fettke

• Last Updated: November 15, 2021

Summary : In this article, learn what is the American Dream today and how it’s changed. Topics also include a history of the American Dream, how to live it today and famous quotes about its meaning.

WHAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM & WHEN DID IT START?

“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” This is the first public American Dream definition from historian James Truslow Adams’ best-selling book “Epic of America,” published in 1931.

In his book, Adams went on to clarify that the American Dream is not, “…a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” 

While the term “American Dream” was officially coined in 1931, its vision was laid out by our Founding Fathers as described in the Declaration of Independence. However, the general idea can be traced as far back as the first colonists to settle the New World.

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PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

The Declaration of Independence protects the idea and pursuit of the American Dream. It states, “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 wrote into law the revolutionary idea that the “pursuit of Happiness” is not just self-indulgence. Rather, it drives ambition and the desire to contribute to the well-being and success of society as a whole. The American Dream provides the opportunity to pursue one’s own happiness under an equal, fair and just democracy.

THE IDEAL GOVERNMENT

With the legal protection of these values, an attractive society was laid out for those aspiring for a better life. A society based on these principles offers everyone the right to live life to its fullest however he or she sees fit. 

For the American Dream to thrive, the Declaration of Independence introduced, “no taxation without representation.” Meaning that the government of the United States would operate as a Democracy, rather than a Monarchy. Under a democracy, leaders are elected by the people and for the people, as opposed to Kings, military rulers or tyrants. 

Elected officials must adhere to all laws and may not create new legislation or impose taxes “without representation” or reason to. Legal disputes are settled by a jury of people and not the opinion of a leader. Finally, the Declaration of Independence states that a nation must be allowed free trade.

The Founding Fathers believed that the best way to ensure national progress is to protect citizens’ right to improve their lives. This is the essence of the American Dream.

THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURY AMERICAN DREAM

The American Dream during the Colonial Era was fueled by religious beliefs of the Puritans who left England to escape persecution. The Puritans believed that life was a continual battle between good and evil. And the only way for good to win out over evil was through ambition and hard work. The religion taught that success on Earth would lead to rewards in heaven.

The main theme in literature throughout the 17th and 18th centuries is largely based on religious and Puritanical beliefs. However, the topics of slavery, the American Revolution, and political and cultural change are also prevelant during this time.

RELIGION DRIVES THE DREAM

According to colonial literature, the Pilgrim’s believed that they were the “new Israelites” or God’s chosen people who would be protected on their journey to the “promised land.” They believed that coming to North America was part of God’s grand plan and success was contingent on the faithfulness of the Puritans.

A PUSH FOR EDUCATION

During the 1700s, Benjamin Franklin led the charge in encouraging American colonists to create wealth through hard work and frugality. His annual magazine,  Poor Richard’s Almanack , used common sense – not religion – along with wit and humor to motivate readers to accomplish the American Dream through industry. 

Franklin believed that the overall betterment of society in America could be achieved by educating the masses.

A LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

The first record of slavery in America was around 1619 when a Dutch ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown. In 1865, nearly 250 years later, the Constitution’s Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. 

The majority of popular literature during this time period conveniently left out the issue of slavery and described America as a place free of oppression and full of opportunity to become independent, self-interested landowners.

POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Thousands of letters between John and Abigail Adams from 1762 to 1801 document enormous social, cultural and political change in America. During this time, Adams served in the Continental Congress, as vice president to George Washington, and eventually as the second President of the United States. These letters chronicle important moments before, during, and after the American Revolution, including the Declaration of Independence signifying the beginning of democracy in America.

THE 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN DREAM

The 19th Century American Dream included ideals of individualism and self-interest, mostly driven by America’s somewhat new freedom from British reign. With the new found freedom established by the birth of the United States of America in 1776, the nineteenth century saw an influx of immigrants from around the globe. Many desperate to escape poverty in war-torn Europe with hopes of starting a new life in America.

INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE CIVIL WAR

The Civil War, a period of industrialization that seemed to almost instantly change American economy and culture. Rather than a mindset of cooperation, competitiveness set in as Americans fought over their share of development and wealth in their hard-won country. These hundred years experienced rapid expansion and the notion of the “self-made man” took on a new, powerful meaning.

While the Civil War obliterated many American’s dreams, the survivors became advocates against racial and gender discrimination.

THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

The 1800s began with a desire to explore the vast, rugged wilderness west of the colonies. This “frontier” mindset triggered the removal and displacement of Native Americans and eventually the race for California gold.

TRANSCENDENTALISM INTRODUCES “NATURE”

With the exploration of the frontier out west, the wilderness became less “wild” and therefore, less feared. Ralph Waldo Emerson replaced the often feared term wilderness, with the word “nature.” Emerson rejected traditional religion and materialism and proclaimed that nature was the root of endless human possibility and fulfillment. 

The Transcendental movement supported the individualistic mindset of this century. Many participants of the movement became well-known social reformists, particularly anti-slavery and promoters of women’s rights. 

THE 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN DREAM

In the 1900s, the diverse backgrounds of people in America had never been greater. The economy experienced record highs and extreme lows, with the devastation of WWI, followed by the Great Depression hitting America’s interests hard in the late 1920s and 1930s. 

Just as America’s economy was recovering from the downturn, Hitler and the Nazi regime ignited WWII in Europe, forcing the Allies to step in. America was once again thrust into another war turning the once idealistic mindset of a nation into cynicism and dread. 

GROWING DISILLUSIONMENT OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

Following the first World War, American’s were haunted by the terror of modern warfare resulting in disillusionment and doubt toward traditional beliefs and the ideals of the American Dream. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel,  This Side of Paradise  (1920), describes the “new” American Dream as a quest to find one’s own identity. “It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being,” writes Fitzgerald. 

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The arrival of the Great Depression magnified the increasing gap between wealthy and poor American’s. Criticism toward the government’s failure to look after the poor were abundant as dreams of prosperity were overpowered by the need to simply survive. For many dreamers, the Great Depression signaled the end of the American Dream.

WAR HAS NO WINNERS

American’s in the twentieth century carried the burden of massive loss due to multiple wars. The 1960s brought the Vietnam War where many people finally verbalized the notion that “war has no winners.” 

Mainstream American culture is thrown to the wayside by many and the redefining of the American Dream continued. The nature of the American Dream was no longer mainstream ideals, but what lies on the edges of society.

THE AGE OF OVERABUNDANCE

Another decade brings yet another shift in the picture of the American Dream. During the1980s, the dream of success shifted away from having a family, home, and job and toward money, fame and power.

THE AMERICAN DREAM VS THE AMERICAN REALITY

The final two decades of the twentieth century American Dream follows a similar theme:  change . The effects of the 1991 Rodney King assault, trial and riots in Los Angeles dug up long-buried cracks in the foundation of the American Dream. 

These events broke open a conversation about the ongoing issues of race, social class, and justice in America. These issues were previously ignored as to not disrupt the comfortable ideals of the mainstream American Dream. 

THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

The American Dream has been a long-time model of prosperity for both American’s and people around the world.  “The charm of anticipated success” has brought millions of immigrants to America, looking for equal opportunity and a better life.

Historian Emily Rosenberg came up with five components of the American Dream that began showing up in nations around the world. These five components include: 

• Belief that other nations should replicate America’s development.
• Faith in a free market economy.
• Support for free trade agreements and culture. 
• Promotion of free flow information and culture. 
• Acceptance of government protection of private enterprise.

WHAT IS THE AMERICAN DREAM TODAY?

The notion of the American Dream continues to be a theme across the nation and around the globe. Whether these dreams brought triumph or despair, American’s keep on dreaming his or her own version of the Dream.

Has the American Dream today moved away from the vision set forth by our Founding Fathers? Many argue that it has, while others remain optimistic in the evolving definition of what the American Dream is today. 

A number of U.S. presidents around the turn of the century, including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush supported homeownership as an integral part of the Dream. 

In fact, during Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008, she laid out her American Dream Plan. This plan included homeownership, college, retirement, and health insurance for children. Obama went on to pass the Affordable Care Act, which expanded the right to healthcare for all American’s. 

THE NEW AMERICAN DREAM

The Great Recession of 2008 resulted in even greater income inequality across the U.S., seemingly putting an end to the American Dream for many. In reality, the recession only injured the materialistic Dream. 

The New American Dream is returning to the basic values of our Founding Fathers. The Center for a New American Dream imagines, “…a focus on more of what really matters, such as creating a meaningful life, contributing to community and society, valuing nature, and spending time with family and friends.” 

THE THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Three factors are said to have made the American Dream possible: 

• A large land mass under one government
• Benign neighbors
• Abundant natural resources

A new crisis has emerged as the impact of climate change is becoming more prevalent. Science has proved a rising rate of global warming resulting in a call for lower levels of consumption and a greater reliance on natural resources. 

Extreme weather, rising sea levels, increasing health risks, and food inflation is already costing the U.S. government billions of dollars, thus slowing economic growth. Therefore, a vision for a new American Dream is needed in order to endure this new crisis.

The Founding Fathers of this nation could not have foreseen an American Dream that didn’t offer the right to clean air, water, and plenty of natural resources. But the vision of our Forefathers included rights to be “self-evident.”

HOW TO LIVE THE AMERICAN DREAM TODAY?

With an entire population united by language, political system, and values, America’s strength only seems to grow with the differences of its citizens. A diverse population gives companies in the U.S. a competitive advantage, with more innovation and accessible markets to test new products.

Additionally, America’s “melting pot” offers diverse demographics, further giving commerce the edge to test niche products, generating more innovative ideas compared to a small, homogenous population. The U.S. continues to enjoy the benefits of cultural diversity.

Thanks to the vision of our Founding Fathers, everyone has an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of one’s own happiness. The Declaration of Independence makes no attempt to define happiness or lifestyle.

Rather, it protects the right for everyone to have the same opportunity to pursue their personal vision of the American Dream. It fosters a belief in free enterprise where people can create and own businesses that operate without government control. It promotes a free market economy where products, prices and services are decided by the market and not the government. Giving everyone an equal opportunity to create wealth however they see fit.

BONUS: FAMOUS AMERICAN DREAM QUOTES

"Hope will be found by understanding that diversity is the essence of the American Dream and why we need each other to fulfill it." Ilhan Omar

"When we make college more affordable, we make the American Dream more achievable. William J. Clinton, 42nd President of the U.S.

"Our workforce and our entire economy are strongest when we embrace diversity to its fullest, and that means opening doors of opportunity to everyone and recognizing that the American Dream excludes no one." Thomas Perez, U.S. Secretary of Labor

"A basic element of the American Dream is equal access to education as a lubricant of social and economic mobility." Nicholas Kristof, Journalist

"I am the epitome of what the American Dream basically said. It said you could come from anywhere and be anything you want in this country." Whoopi Goldberg, Actress and Comedian

"The promise of the American Dream requires that we are all provided an equal opportunity to participate in and contribute to our nation." Charles B Rangel, U.S. Congress

"To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom." Maya Lin, Architect

"For many, the American Dream has become a nightmare." Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator

"I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American Dream." Bruce Springsteen, Musician

“My father worked in the Post Office. A lot of double shifts. All his friends were in the same situation – truck drivers, taxi cab drivers, grocery clerks. Blue collar guys punching the clock and working long, hard hours. The thought that sustained them was the one at the center of the American Dream.” Gary David Goldberg, Writer

“To realize the American Dream, the most important thing to understand is that it belongs to everybody. It’s a human dream. If you understand this and work very hard, it is possible.” Cristina Saralegui, Journalist

“There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American Dream.” Archibald Macleish, Poet

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches – with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone – was once at the core of the American Dream.” Robert Reich, Economist and Former U.S. Secretary of Labor

“The American Dream is a phrase we’ll have to wrestle with all our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we’re redefining it now.” Rita Dove, Poet

THE BOTTOM LINE

What is the American Dream today? This Thanksgiving, may we reflect on what the American Dream means to all of us, both individually and collectively. May we celebrate our diversity, show gratitude and respect to our Forefathers who paved the way for every American to have the freedom to define, pursue and achieve the Dream.

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Student Opinion

Do You Think the American Dream Is Real?

By Jeremy Engle

• Feb. 12, 2019

What does the American dream mean to you? A house with a white picket fence? Lavish wealth? A life better than your parents’?

Do you think you will be able to achieve the American dream?

In “ The American Dream Is Alive and Well ,” Samuel J. Abrams writes:

I am pleased to report that the American dream is alive and well for an overwhelming majority of Americans. This claim might sound far-fetched given the cultural climate in the United States today. Especially since President Trump took office, hardly a day goes by without a fresh tale of economic anxiety, political disunity or social struggle. Opportunities to achieve material success and social mobility through hard, honest work — which many people, including me, have assumed to be the core idea of the American dream — appear to be diminishing. But Americans, it turns out, have something else in mind when they talk about the American dream. And they believe that they are living it. Last year the American Enterprise Institute and I joined forces with the research center NORC at the University of Chicago and surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,411 Americans about their attitudes toward community and society. The center is renowned for offering “deep” samples of Americans, not just random ones, so that researchers can be confident that they are reaching Americans in all walks of life: rural, urban, exurban and so on. Our findings were released on Tuesday as an American Enterprise Institute report.

What our survey found about the American dream came as a surprise to me. When Americans were asked what makes the American dream a reality, they did not select as essential factors becoming wealthy, owning a home or having a successful career. Instead, 85 percent indicated that “to have freedom of choice in how to live” was essential to achieving the American dream. In addition, 83 percent indicated that “a good family life” was essential. The “traditional” factors (at least as I had understood them) were seen as less important. Only 16 percent said that to achieve the American dream, they believed it was essential to “become wealthy,” only 45 percent said it was essential “to have a better quality of life than your parents,” and just 49 percent said that “having a successful career” was key.

The Opinion piece continues:

The data also show that most Americans believe themselves to be achieving this version of the American dream, with 41 percent reporting that their families are already living the American dream and another 41 percent reporting that they are well on the way to doing so. Only 18 percent took the position that the American dream was out of reach for them

Collectively, 82 percent of Americans said they were optimistic about their future, and there was a fairly uniform positive outlook across the nation. Factors such as region, urbanity, partisanship and housing type (such as a single‐family detached home versus an apartment) barely affected these patterns, with all groups hovering around 80 percent. Even race and ethnicity, which are regularly cited as key factors in thwarting upward mobility, corresponded to no real differences in outlook: Eighty-one percent of non‐Hispanic whites; 80 percent of blacks, Hispanics and those of mixed race; and 85 percent of those with Asian heritage said that they had achieved or were on their way to achieving the American dream.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

— What does the American dream mean to you? Did reading this article change your definition? Do you think your own dreams are different from those of your parents at your age? Your grandparents?

— Do you believe your family has achieved, or is on the way to achieving, the American dream? Why or why not? Do you think you will be able to achieve the American dream when you are older? What leads you to believe this?

— Do you think the American dream is available to all Americans or are there boundaries and obstacles for some? If yes, what are they?

— The article concludes:

What conclusions should we draw from this research? I think the findings suggest that Americans would be well served to focus less intently on the nastiness of our partisan politics and the material temptations of our consumer culture, and to focus more on the communities they are part of and exercising their freedom to live as they wish. After all, that is what most of us seem to think is what really matters — and it’s in reach for almost all of us.

Do you agree? What other conclusions might be drawn? Does this article make you more optimistic about this country and your future?

— Is the American dream a useful concept? Is it helpful in measuring our own or our country’s health and success? Do you believe it is, or has ever been, an ideal worth striving for? Is there any drawback to continuing to use the concept even as its meaning evolves?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

103 American Dream Essay Topics & Examples

If you’re in need of American dream topics for an essay, research paper, or discussion, this article is for you. Our experts have prepared some ideas and writing tips that you will find below.

📃 10 Tips for Writing American Dream Essays

🏆 best american dream essay topics & essay examples, 👍 catchy american dream topics, ❓ american dream research questions.

The American dream is an interesting topic that one can discuss from various perspectives. If you need to write an essay on the American dream, you should understand this concept clearly.

You can choose to present the American dream as a miracle that one cannot reach or depict a free and wealthy nation. In any case, the American dream essay is a good opportunity to reflect on the concept and learn more about it.

There are many topics you can choose from while writing your essay. Here are some examples of the American dream essay topics we can suggest:

• The true meaning of the American dream
• The image of the American dream in the Great Gatsby
• Is the American dream still relevant in today’s society?
• The role of the American dream: Discussion
• Americans’ beliefs and values: The American dream
• Can we achieve the American dream?
• The American dream in today’s world and society

Remember that you do not have to select one of the American dream essay titles and can come up with your own one. Once you have selected the topic, start working on your essay. Here are ten useful tips that will help you to write an outstanding paper:

• Start working on your essay ahead of time. You will need some time to study the issue, write the paper, and correct possible errors.
• Do preliminary research on the issue you want to discuss. The more information you know about the question, the better. We advise you to rely on credible sources exclusively and avoid using Wikipedia or similar websites.
• Check out the American dream essay examples online if you are not sure that the selected problem is relevant. Avoid copying the information you will find and only use it as guidance.
• Write an outline for your essay. Think of how you can organize your paper and choose titles for each of the sections. Remember that you should include an introductory paragraph and a concluding section along with body paragraphs.
• Remember that you should present the American dream essay thesis clearly. You can put it in the last sentence of your introductory paragraph.
• Your essay should be engaging for the audience. Help your reader to know something new about the issue and include some interesting facts that may not know about. Avoid overly complex sentences and structures.
• Make your essay personal, if it is possible. Do not focus on your opinion solely but provide your perspectives on the issue or discuss your concern about it. You can talk about your experiences with the American dream, too.
• Provide statistical data if you can. For example, you can find the results of surveys about people’s perspectives on the American dream.
• The concluding paragraph is an important section of the paper. Present the thesis and all of your arguments once again and provide recommendations, if necessary. Remember that this paragraph should not include new information or in-text citations.
• Do not send your paper to your professor right away. Check it several times to make sure that there are no grammatical mistakes in it. If you have time, you can put the paper away for several days and revise it later with “fresh” eyes.

Feel free to find an essay sample in our collection and get some ideas for your outstanding paper!

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• American Dream Is Not a Myth The paper is based on the argument, a simplified definition of the American dream: the American dream can be defined as “the achievement of economic and social advancement through hard work and determination”.
• The Immigrant Experience and the Failure of the American Dream The fates of the heroes of the book amaze with their tragedy, and this is the story of slaves of wage labor.
• Tycoons and Their American Dream The American Dream as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, and others saw it and forged it to be seen by others contributed meaningfully to the values of the American people and the priorities of a nation.
• Theater Exam: American Dream and Family Legacy To start the discussion on the concept of American Dream, I would like to focus on Willy, the main character of the Death of a Salesman.
• Is the American Dream Still Alive? The topic of discussion in this setting would be the American dream and the factors associated with the quest. They would talk about the cost of living, the cost of education, and the fact that […]
• American Dream in Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” The play Death of a salesman is indeed an anatomy of the American dream especially because the plot of the story revolves around some of the basic material gains that individuals in the American society […]
• “American Dream” of English and Chinese Immigrants My family decided to move to the US from England because of the low wages in our town. My intentions were to explore the new opportunities of the West and to earn more money than […]
• The American Dream and Working Conditions In fact, it might be said that it is due to their efforts that the American Dream still exists as a piece of reality.
• American Dream and Equity of Outcome and Opportunity The American dream is one of the most famous declarations of the world and the American subsequent governments have kept the dream alive for the last hundred years.
• Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream This is one of the drawbacks that should be taken into account by the viewers who want to get a better idea about the causes of the problems described in the movie.
• American Dream in Hansberry’s and Miller’s Tragedies Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” tell the stories about how people can perceive and be affected by the idea of the American Dream, how they choose wrong dreams […]
• Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream – Movie Analysis It can be taken as the national ethos of the citizens of the USA. The basis of the American society is broken and it is not united anymore.
• Music Talent Shows and the American Dream Talent search shows, like American Idol and The Voice, have suffered a lot of criticism for different reasons. Stanley says the main reason for this cynicism is the failure of such shows to focus on […]
• Michelle Obama’s Remarks on American Dream She added that the main goal was to secure the blessings of liberty and to bring about the fulfillment of the promise of equality.
• The American Dream’s Concept The American economy is also likely to improve as a result of realizing the American dream 2013 since most of the residents are likely to indulge in productive activities as stipulated in the American dream […]
• The Concept of Progress or the Pursuit of the American Dream The concept of progress or the pursuit of the American Dream since 1930s has been a matter of concern for many immigrants who believe that they can achieve much in the US than in their […]
• The Book American Dream by Jason DeParle From the name of the book, it is clear that the cardinal theme of the book is the American dream. This is contrary to the fact that she was pregnant and in a crack house.
• The Definition of the Great American Dream: Hearing Opportunity Knock Although the concept of the American Dream is very recognizable, its essence is very hard to nail down, since it incorporates a number of social, economical and financial principles; largely, the American Dream is the […]
• The American Dream Negative Sides and Benefits The United States is thought of as the land of opportunity and there are many people who want to live “The American Dream”.
• Role of Money in the American Dream’s Concept Many people lack the meaning of the American dream because they are always looking forward to find opportunity and fail to realize that the opportunity to succeed is always around them in the work they […]
• The Reality of American Dream The government encouraged the immigration of the population whose labor and skills were required in the United States. The housing in the urban was overcrowded with very unsanitary conditions, and some of the immigrants did […]
• Social Status Anxiety and the American Dream The pain of a loss and the status anxiety that came with being inferior to other students at Harvard instigated the urge to revenge and brought a desire to achieve success.
• Francis Scott Fitzgerald & His American Dream In the novel “Tender is the Night,” Fitzgerald describes the society in Riviera where he and his family had moved to live after his misfortune of late inheritance.
• American Dream: Is It Still There? It is a dream for immigrants from the Middle East to be in America; a country where discrimination is history and where no one will prevent them from achieving their dreams in life.
• The American Dream: Walt Disney’s Cinderella and Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man This is attributed to the fact that the original ideas and the fundamental principals that founded the dream are quickly fading away given the changing fortunes of the average American.
• The Death of the American Dream It is the moral decay that leads to the loss of freedom, the very essence of the founding of the American dream.
• American Dream and Unfulfilling Reality Living the American dream is the ultimate dream for most of the American citizens and those aspiring to acquire American citizenship.
• Inequality and the American Dream It is only after the poor workers are assured of their jobs that the American model can be said to be successful.
• A Response to the Article “Inequality and the American Dream” It has drawn my attention that other world countries embrace the “American model” since the super power has enormous wealth and its economic development is marked by up-to-date juggernauts of globalization and technology.
• In Pursuit of the American Dream: An Analysis of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers The experiences of the characters in the novel portray the endeavors of the early immigrants’ pursuit of the American dream. The instinct to forgo the comforts, which a home country offers by default and then […]
• How Did Ben Franklin Exemplify the American Dream?
• Does Fitzgerald Condemn the American Dream in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How Do Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass Represent the American Dream?
• Has America Lost Its Potential to Achieve the American Dream?
• How Has Disney’s Social Power Influenced the Vision of the American Dream?
• Does the American Dream Really Exist?
• How Does the Great Gatsby Portray the Death of the American Dream?
• What Does “The Great Gatsby” Have to Say About the Condition of the American Dream in the 1920s?
• How Does One Achieve the American Dream?
• What Are the Greatest Obstacles of Full Access to the American Dream?
• How Has the American Dream Been Translated Into Popular Film?
• What Does the American Dream Mean to an Immigrant?
• How Does Arthur Miller Through “Death of a Salesman” Deal With the Theme of the American Dream?
• What Must Everyone Know About the American Dream?
• How Has the American Dream Changed Over Time?
• What Is Infamous About the American Dream?
• How Does Millar Portray His Views of the American Dream Using Willy Loman?
• When Did American Dream Start?
• How Has the Media Changed the American Dream?
• Who Would Think the American Dream Isn’t Possible?
• How Does Steinbeck Present the American Dream in “Of Mice and Men”?
• Why Will Equal Pay Help Women Achieve the American Dream?
• How Might the Disadvantage of Immigration Affect the Chances of Having That American Dream?
• Why Is the American Dream Equally Given and Registered To All Citizens?
• How Does Extreme Inequality Make the American Dream Inaccessible?
• Why Is the American Dream Still Alive in the United States?
• How Are Millennials Redefining the American Dream?
• Why Is the American Dream Unattainable?
• How Does Society Influence the Idea of the American Dream?
• Why Must the United States Renew Opportunities to Achieve the American Dream to Reform Immigration Policy?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Waking Up from the American Dream

By Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

If you are an undocumented person anywhere in America, some of the things you do to make a dignified life for yourself and your loved ones are illegal. Others require a special set of skills. The elders know some great tricks—crossing deserts in the dead of night, studying the Rio Grande for weeks to find the shallowest bend of river to cross, getting a job on their first day in the country, finding apartments that don’t need a lease, learning English at public libraries, community colleges, or from “Frasier.” I would not have been able to do a single thing that the elders have done. But the elders often have only one hope for survival, which we tend not to mention. I’m talking about children. And no, it’s not an “anchor baby” thing. Our parents have kids for the same reasons as most people, but their sacrifice for us is impossible to articulate, and its weight is felt deep down, in the body. That is the pact between immigrants and their children in America: they give us a better life, and we spend the rest of that life figuring out how much of our flesh will pay off the debt.

I am a first-generation immigrant, undocumented for most of my life, then on DACA , now a permanent resident. But my real identity, the one that follows me around like a migraine, is that I am the daughter of immigrants. As such, I have some skills of my own.

You pick them up young. Something we always hear about, because Americans love this shit, is that immigrant children often translate for their parents. I began doing this as a little girl, because I lost my accent, dumb luck, and because I was adorable in the way that adults like, which is to say I had large, frightened eyes and a flamboyant vocabulary. As soon as doctors or teachers began talking, I felt my parents’ nervous energy, and I’d either answer for them or interpret their response. It was like my little Model U.N. job. I was around seven. My career as a professional daughter of immigrants had begun.

In my teens, I began to specialize. I became a performance artist. I accompanied my parents to places where I knew they would be discriminated against, and where I could insure that their rights would be granted. If a bank teller wasn’t accepting their I.D., I’d stroll in with an oversized Forever 21 blazer, red lipstick, a slicked-back bun, and fresh Stan Smiths. I brought a pleather folder and made sure my handshake broke bones. Sometimes I appealed to decency, sometimes to law, sometimes to God. Sometimes I leaned back in my chair, like a sexy gangster, and said, “So, you tell me how you want my mom to survive in this country without a bank account. You close at four, but I have all the time in the world.” Then I’d wink. It was vaudeville, but it worked.

My parents came to America in their early twenties, naïve about what awaited them. Back in Ecuador, they had encountered images of a wealthy nation—the requisite flashes of Clint Eastwood and the New York City skyline—and heard stories about migrants who had done O.K. for themselves there. But my parents were not starry-eyed people. They were just kids, lost and reckless, running away from the dead ends around them.

My father is the only son of a callous mother and an absent father. My mother, the result of her mother’s rape, grew up cared for by an aunt and uncle. When she married my father, it was for the reasons a lot of women marry: for love, and to escape. The day I was born, she once told me, was the happiest day of her life.

Soon after that, my parents, owners of a small auto-body business, found themselves in debt. When I was eighteen months old, they left me with family and settled in Brooklyn, hoping to work for a year and move back once they’d saved up some money. I haven’t asked them much about this time—I’ve never felt the urge—but I know that one year became three. I also know that they began to be lured by the prospect of better opportunities for their daughter. Teachers had remarked that I was talented. My mother, especially, felt that Ecuador was not the place for me. She knew how the country would limit the woman she imagined I would become—Hillary Clinton, perhaps, or Princess Di.

My parents sent loving letters to Ecuador. They said that they were facing a range of hardships so that I could have a better life. They said that we would reunite soon, though the date was unspecified. They said that I had to behave, not walk into traffic—I seem to have developed a habit of doing this—and work hard, so they could send me little gifts and chocolates. I was a toddler, but I understood. My parents left to give me things, and I had to do other things in order to repay them. It was simple math.

They sent for me when I was just shy of five years old. I arrived at J.F.K. airport. My father, who seemed like a total stranger, ran to me and picked me up and kissed me, and my mother looked on and wept. I recall thinking she was pretty, and being embarrassed by the attention. They had brought roses, Teddy bears, and Tweety Bird balloons.

Getting to know one another was easy enough. My father liked to read and lecture, and had a bad temper. My mother was soft-spoken around him but funny and mean—like a drag queen—with me. She liked Vogue . I was enrolled in a Catholic school and quickly learned English—through immersion, but also through “Reading Rainbow” and a Franklin talking dictionary that my father bought me. It gave me a colorful vocabulary and weirdly over-enunciated diction. If I typed the right terms, it even gave me erotica.

Meanwhile, I had confirmed that my parents were not tony expats. At home, meals could be rice and a fried egg. We sometimes hid from our landlord by crouching next to my bed and drawing the blinds. My father had started out driving a cab, but after 9/11, when the governor revoked the driver’s licenses of undocumented immigrants, he began working as a deliveryman, carrying meals to Wall Street executives, the plastic bags slicing into his fingers. Some of those executives forced him to ride on freight elevators. Others tipped him in spare change.

My mother worked in a factory. For seven days a week, sometimes in twelve-hour shifts, she sewed in a heat that caught in your throat like lint, while her bosses, also immigrants, hurled racist slurs at her. Some days I sat on the factory floor, making dolls with swatches of fabric, cosplaying childhood. I didn’t put a lot of effort into making the dolls—I sort of just screwed around, with an eye on my mom at her sewing station, stiffening whenever her supervisor came by to see how fast she was working. What could I do to protect her? Well, murder, I guess.

Our problem appeared to be poverty, which even then, before I’d seen “Rent,” seemed glamorous, or at least normal. All the protagonists in the books I read were poor. Ramona Quimby on Klickitat Street, the kids in “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.” Every fictional child was hungry, an orphan, or tubercular. But there was something else setting us apart. At school, I looked at my nonwhite classmates and wondered how their parents could be nurses, or own houses, or leave the country on vacation. It was none of my business—everyone in New York had secrets—but I cautiously gathered intel, toothpick in mouth. I finally cracked the case when I tried to apply to an essay contest and asked my parents for my Social Security number. My father was probably reading a newspaper, and I doubt he even looked up to say, “We don’t have papers, so we don’t have a Social.”

It was not traumatic. I turned on our computer, waited for the dial-up, and searched what it meant not to have a Social Security number. “Undocumented immigrant” had not yet entered the discourse. Back then, the politically correct term, the term I saw online, was “illegal immigrant,” which grated—it was hurtful in a clinical way, like having your teeth drilled. Various angry comments sections offered another option: illegal alien . I knew it was form language, legalese meant to wound me, but it didn’t. It was punk as hell. We were hated , and maybe not entirely of this world. I had just discovered Kurt Cobain.

Obviously, I learned that my parents and I could be deported at any time. Was that scary? Sure. But a deportation still seemed like spy-movie stuff. And, luckily, I had an ally. My brother was born when I was ten years old. He was our family’s first citizen, and he was named after a captain of the New York Yankees. Before he was old enough to appreciate art, I took him to the Met. I introduced him to “S.N.L.” and “Letterman” and “Fun Home” and “Persepolis”—all the things I felt an upper-middle-class parent would do—so that he could thrive at school, get a great job, and make money. We would need to armor our parents with our success.

We moved to Queens, and I entered high school. One day, my dad heard about a new bill in Congress on Spanish radio. It was called the DREAM Act, and it proposed a path to legalization for undocumented kids who had gone to school here or served in the military. My dad guaranteed that it’d pass by the time I graduated. I never react to good news—stoicism is part of the brand—but I was optimistic. The bill was bipartisan. John McCain supported it, and I knew he had been a P.O.W., and that made me feel connected to a real American hero. Each time I saw an “R” next to a sponsor’s name my heart fluttered with joy. People who were supposed to hate me had now decided to love me.

But the bill was rejected and reintroduced, again and again, for years. It never passed. And, in a distinctly American twist, its gauzy rhetoric was all that survived. Now there was a new term on the block: “Dreamers.” Politicians began to use it to refer to the “good” children of immigrants, the ones who did well in school and stayed off the mean streets—the innocents. There are about a million undocumented children in America. The non-innocents, one presumes, are the ones in cages, covered in foil blankets, or lost, disappeared by the government.

I never called myself a Dreamer. The word was saccharine and dumb, and it yoked basic human rights to getting an A on a report card. Dreamers couldn’t flunk out of high school, or have D.U.I.s, or work at McDonald’s. Those kids lived with the pressure of needing a literal miracle in order to save their families, but the miracle didn’t happen, because the odds were against them, because the odds were against all of us. And so America decided that they didn’t deserve an I.D.

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The Dream, it turned out, needed to demonize others in order to help the chosen few. Our parents, too, would be sacrificed. The price of our innocence was the guilt of our loved ones. Jeff Sessions, while he was Attorney General, suggested that we had been trafficked against our will. People actually pitied me because my parents brought me to America. Without even consulting me.

The irony, of course, is that the Dream was our inheritance. We were Dreamers because our parents had dreams.

It’s painful to think about this. My mother, an aspiring interior designer, has gone twenty-eight years without a sick day. My dad, who loves problem-solving, has spent his life wanting a restaurant. He’s a talented cook and a brilliant manager, and he often did the work of his actual managers for them. But, without papers, he could advance only so far in a job. He needed to be paid in cash; he could never receive benefits.

He often used a soccer metaphor to describe our journey in America. Our family was a team, but I scored the goals. Everything my family did was, in some sense, a pass to me. Then the American Dream could be mine, and then we could start passing to my brother. That’s how my dad explained his limp every night, his feet blistered from speed-running deliveries. It’s why we sometimes didn’t have money for electricity or shampoo. Those were fouls. Sometimes my parents did tricky things to survive that you’ll never know about. Those were nutmegs. In 2015, when the U.S. women’s team won the World Cup, my dad went to the parade and sent me a selfie. “Girl power!” the text read.

My father is a passionate, diatribe-loving feminist, though his feminism often seems to exclude my mother. When I was in elementary school, he would take me to the local branch of the Queens Public Library and check out the memoir of Rosalía Arteaga Serrano, the only female President in Ecuador’s history. Serrano was ousted from office, seemingly because she was a woman. My father would read aloud from the book for hours, pausing to tell me that I’d need to toughen up. He would read from dictators’ speeches—not for the politics, but for the power of persuasive oratory. We went to the library nearly every weekend for thirteen years.

My mother left her factory job to give me, the anointed one, full-time academic support. She pulled all-nighters to help me make extravagant posters. She grilled me with vocabulary flash cards, struggling to pronounce the words but laughing and slapping me with pillows if I got something wrong. I aced the language portions of my PSATs and SATs, partly because of luck, and partly because of my parents’ locally controversial refusal to let me do household chores, ever, because they wanted me to be reading, always reading, instead.

If this all seems strategic, it should. The American Dream doesn’t just happen to cheery Pollyannas. It happens to iconoclasts with a plan and a certain amount of cunning. The first time I encountered the idea of the Dream, it was in English class, discussing “The Great Gatsby.” My classmates all thought that Gatsby seemed sort of sad, a pathetic figure. I adored him. He created his own persona, made a fortune in an informal economy, and lived a quiet, paranoid, reclusive life. Most of all, he longed. He stood at the edge of Long Island Sound, longing for Daisy, and I took the train uptown to Columbia University and looked out at the campus, hoping it could one day be mine. At the time, it was functionally impossible for undocumented students to enroll at Columbia. The same held for many schools. Keep dreaming, my parents said.

I did. I was valedictorian of my class, miraculously got into Harvard, and was tapped to join a secret society that once included T. S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. I was the only Latina inducted, I think, and I was very chill when an English-Spanish dictionary appeared in our club bathroom after I started going to teas. When I graduated, in 2011, our country was deporting people at record rates. I knew that I needed to add even more of a golden flicker to my illegality, so that if I was deported, or if my parents were deported, we would not go in the middle of the night, in silence, anonymously, as Americans next door watched another episode of “The Bachelor.” So I began writing, with the explicit aim of entering the canon. I wrote a book about undocumented immigrants, approaching them not as shadowy victims or gilded heroes but as people, flawed and complex. It was reviewed well, nominated for things. A President commended it.

But it’s hard to feel anything. My parents remain poor and undocumented. I cannot protect them with prizes or grades. My father sobbed when I handed him my diploma, but it was not the piece of paper that would make it all better, no matter how heavy the stock.

By the time I was in grad school, my parents’ thirty-year marriage was over. They had spent most of those years in America, with their heads down and their bodies broken; it was hard not to see the split as inevitable. My mom called me to say she’d had enough. My brother supported her decision. I talked to each parent, and helped them mutually agree on a date. On a Tuesday night, my father moved out, leaving his old parenting books behind, while my mom and brother were at church. I asked my father to text my brother that he loved him. I think he texted him exactly that. Then I collapsed onto the floor beneath an open drawer of knives, texted my partner to come help me, and convulsed in sobs.

After that, my mom became depressed. I did hours of research and found her a highly qualified, trauma-informed psychiatrist, a Spanish speaker who charged on a sliding scale I could afford. My mom got on Lexapro, which helped. She also started a job that makes her very happy. In order to find her that job, I took a Klonopin and browsed Craigslist for hours each day, e-mailing dozens of people, being vague about legal status in a clever but truthful way. I impersonated her in phone interviews, hanging off my couch, the blood rushing to my head, struggling not to do an offensive accent.

You know how, when you get a migraine, you regret how stupid you were for taking those sweet, painless days for granted? Although my days are hard, I understand that I’m living in an era of painlessness, and that a time will come when I look back and wonder why I was such a stupid, whining fool. My mom’s job involves hard manual labor, sometimes in the snow or the rain. I got her a real winter coat, her first, from Eddie Bauer. I got her a pair of Hunter boots. These were things she needed, things I had seen on women her age on the subway, their hands bearing bags from Whole Foods. My mom’s hands are arthritic. She sends me pictures of them covered in bandages.

My brother and I now have a pact: neither of us can die, because then the other would be stuck with our parents. My brother is twenty-two, still in college, and living with my mom. He, too, has some skills. He is gentle, kind, and excellent at deëscalating conflict. He mediated my parents’ arguments for years. He has also never tried to change them, which I have, through a regimen of therapy, books, and cheesy Instagram quotes. So we’ve decided that, in the long term, since his goal is to get a job, get married, have kids, and stay in Queens, he’ll invite Mom to move in with him, to help take care of the grandkids. He’ll handle the emotional labor, since it doesn’t traumatize him. And I’ll handle the financial support, since it doesn’t traumatize me.

I love my parents. I know I love them. But what I feel for them daily is a mixture of terror, panic, obligation, sorrow, anger, pity, and a shame so hot that I need to lie face down, in my underwear, on very cold sheets. Many Americans have vulnerable parents, and strive to succeed in order to save them. I hold those people in the highest regard. But the undocumented face a unique burden, due to scorn and a lack of support from the government. Because our parents made a choice—the choice to migrate—few people pity them, or wonder whether restitution should be made for decades of exploitation. That choice, the original sin, is why our parents were thrown out of paradise. They were tempted by curiosity and hunger, by fleshly desires.

And so we return to the debt. However my parents suffer in their final years will be related to their migration—to their toil in this country, to their lack of health care and housing support, to psychic fatigue. They were able, because of that sacrifice, to give me their version of the Dream: an education, a New York accent, a life that can better itself. But that life does not fully belong to me. My version of the American Dream is seeing them age with dignity, being able to help them retire, and keeping them from being pushed onto train tracks in a random hate crime. For us, gratitude and guilt feel almost identical. Love is difficult to separate from self-erasure. All we can give one another is ourselves.

Scholars often write about the harm that’s done when children become caretakers, but they’re reluctant to do so when it comes to immigrants. For us, they say, this situation is cultural . Because we grow up in tight-knit families. Because we respect our elders. In fact, it’s just the means of living that’s available to us. It’s a survival mechanism, a mutual-aid society at the family level. There is culture, and then there is adaptation to precarity and surveillance. If we are lost in the promised land, perhaps it’s because the ground has never quite seemed solid beneath our feet.

When I was a kid, my mother found a crystal heart in my father’s taxi. The light that came through it was pretty, shimmering, like a gasoline spill on the road. She put it in her jewelry box, and sometimes we’d take out the box, spill the contents onto my pink twin bed, and admire what we both thought was a heart-shaped diamond. I grew up, I went to college. I often heard of kids who had inherited their grandmother’s heirlooms, and I sincerely believed that there were jewels in my family, too. Then, a few years ago, my partner and I visited my mom, and she spilled out her box. She gave me a few items I cherish: a nameplate bracelet in white, yellow, and rose gold, and the thick gold hoop earrings that she wore when she first moved to Brooklyn. Everything else was costume jewelry. I couldn’t find the heart.

I realized that, when my mother found the crystal, she was around the same age I am now. She had probably never held a diamond, and she probably wanted to believe that she had found one in America, a dream come true. She wanted me to believe it, and then, as we both grew up, alone, together, she stopped believing, stopped wanting to believe, and stopped me from wanting to believe. And she probably threw that shit out. I didn’t ask. Some things are none of our business. ♦

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By Zach Williams

By Mohammed Naseehu Ali

By Clarissa Wei

In Search of the American Dream

Articles by Eleanor Roosevelt and others take up the question of what constitutes the American ideal

In 1931, when writer James Truslow Adams coined the term “the American Dream,” it had more to do with idealism than material prosperity. The American Dream, he wrote in The American Epic (a book glowingly reviewed in the Atlantic ’s December 1931 issue), was “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” Despite Truslow’s tidy summation, the ideals that America is supposed to represent have always been contested. Over the years, a number of Atlantic writers have tackled the subject, offering a wide array of perspectives, and sometimes raising more questions than answers.

In 1881, the prominent Boston philanthropist Kate Gannet Wells characterized Americanism as, “the fixed conviction that one man is the equivalent of another in capacity, and that his failure to prove it by results is the consequence of circumstances beyond his control.” This was an outlook, according to Wells, that cut both ways: “It is this fixed belief which constitutes the essence of American impudence, boasting, aggressiveness, want of grace, and knock-you-down manner. It is also the source of our sturdy independence, our valuation of character as the final estimate.”

Other Atlantic writers have pointed out another unique feature of American Nationalism. Unlike the deep-seated tribal loyalties found across Europe, American patriotism is an artificial construct. On the eve of America’s entrance into World War I, a time of mass immigration and demographic upheaval, essayist Agnes Repplier emphasized the importance of cultivating a shared national vision. In “Americanism” (1916), she drew a sharp contrast between the United States and the nations of the old world:

Of all the countries in the world, we and we only have any need to create artificially the patriotism which is the birthright of other nations. Into the hearts of six millions of foreign-born men—less than half of them naturalized—we must infuse that quality of devotion which will make them place the good of the state above their personal good.

Yet not all writers were so convinced of the fragility and tenuousness of the bonds that unify Americans. When French journalist Raoul De Roussy De Sales turned his eye to America, he discovered a nation with a well-defined, almost brash identity. In his 1939 essay “What Makes an American,” he brought an outsider’s view reminiscent of de Tocqueville:

America is a permanent protest against the rest of the world, and particularly against Europe.… This faith, like all faiths, does not engender a passive attitude toward the rest of the world. Americans are tolerant of all creeds and to all convictions, but few people express their distrust and indignation with more vigor whenever some of their beliefs are offended. Few people are more conscious that ideas may be more destructive than guns.

De Sales was fascinated by America’s conception of itself as a framework of ideas—one that remained as vivid and meaningful to its present-day inhabitants as it had to its founders.

Curiously enough, in a country where material changes are extraordinarily rapid, this moral and political frame has the stability of dogma. For instance, America is the only country in the world which pretends to listen to the teaching of its founders as if they were still alive. Political battles of today are fought with arguments based on the speeches of writings of men dead over a century ago. Most Americans behave, in fact, as if men like Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and many others could be called up on the phone for advice. Their wisdom is considered as eternal as that of the Biblical prophets.

Atlantic contributors addressed, too, the inevitable conflicts that emerge when American realities fall short of American ideals. In his 1988 article “The Return of Inequality,” Thomas Byrne Edsall warned that the country’s growing gulf between the affluent and middle classes was anathema to the American Dream. “Its manifestations are subtle: marginally frustrated hopes, a mocking disparity between the good life available to the few and the life that many settle for—resignation, guilt, social helplessness.” This inequality, he argued, also undermined the conviction that “Egalitarianism has been the Democratic answer to Marxism.”

Ultimately, Eleanor Roosevelt may have summarized America’s uniqueness in the most compelling words. In her Cold War-era essay “What Has Happened to the American Dream?” (1961), Roosevelt expressed deep concern about America’s image abroad, and lamented the creeping influence of Soviet Russia. “The future will be determined by the young,” she asserted, “and there is no more essential task today, it seems to me, than to bring before them once more, in all its brightness, in all its splendor and beauty, the American Dream.” But what exactly was this dream? Perhaps, she suggested, its appeal lies in its very mutability—in the fact that it is expansive enough to allow each of us to draw inspiration from it in our own way:

No single individual … and no single group has an exclusive claim to the American dream. But we have all, I think, a single vision of what it is, not merely as a hope and an aspiration, but as a way of life, which we can come ever closer to attaining it its ideal form if we keep shining and unsullied our purpose and our belief in its essential value.

Where is the American dream now?

Polls and pundits agree that the American dream is on life support. But there may be a cure — and the news of its imminent death may be greatly exaggerated.

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A lot of Americans tell pollsters they fear the American dream is dead. And depending on how you define "American dream," the data supports that concern — up to a point. Doubts about upward mobility and a sunnier tomorrow are nothing new: Polls show Americans also lost faith in the American dream during the early 1990s and mid-2010s , for example. But this bout of pessimism may be something new. Just what is the American dream, and what kind of state is it in today?

What is the American dream?

David Leonhardt of The New York Times traces the phrase back to historian James Truslow Adams, who wrote in his 1931 book "The Epic of America " that the American dream is "of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement," and "regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

Today the American dream is generally understood to mean that the U.S. is an upwardly mobile society where one generation can do better financially than the last with the aid of hard work and perseverance .

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Adams was writing at the height of the Great Depression. His American dream concept is aspirational, and a decade after he published "The Epic of America," the American dream was coming true. Americans born in 1940 had a 92% chance of obtaining a higher household income than their parents — that is, it was a near certainty this cohort would live out the American dream, Leonhardt says, citing research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty.

But Americans born in 1980 have only a 50-50 shot at doing better than their parents, Chetty found. Leonhardt calls this the Great American Stagnation.

Why do Americans think the dream is dying?

The numbers, to some extent, speak for themselves.

A typical U.S. family had a slightly lower net worth in 2019 than a typical family in 2001, Leonhardt reported in his new book about the fading of the American dream, " Ours Was the Shining Future ." "There has not been such a long period of wealth stagnation since the Great Depression," he wrote. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich added at Substack that "the earnings of the typical American have barely budged (adjusted for inflation)" over the past 40 years, while the compensation for CEOs of large corporations has skyrocketed to 300 times the pay of their typical worker, from 20 times in the 1950s and '60s. The wealthiest 1% of Americans now bring home more than 40% of the country's total income, up from 10% in the 1950s and '60s, and they control 31% of the nation's wealth while the bottom 50% has only 2.5%.

"Income and wealth inequality have both soared" in America, but the "clearest sign of our problems" is the "stagnation of life expectancy for working-class people," Leonhardt argued at the Times . "In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country," but now it ranks lower than its peers and even many poorer countries .

"These kinds of changes in our economy have led a lot of people to express frustration about this being a country where it's no longer easy to get ahead, even through hard work," Harvard's Chetty said at an Oct. 18 forum on "Education, Elitism and Economic Opportunity."

In fact, an Oct. 19-24 Wall Street Journal/NORC poll found that only 36% of voters said the American dream — " that if you work hard you'll get ahead " — still holds true, down from 53% and 48% in similar polls in 2012 and 2016, respectively. A 45% plurality of respondents said that notion held true once but not anymore. An NBC News poll conducted Nov. 10-14 found that a record-low 19% of voters said they feel confident life for their children's generation will be better than for their own generation, while 75% were not confident their children will be better off.

This pessimism about the American dream reflects "a mix of economic and social data that show broad improvement in living standards over time, but also challenges for workers," the Journal suggested.

The U.S. is coming off a year of high inflation and the rising borrowing costs from the Federal Reserve's aggressive moves to fight inflation by slowing economic growth. The rising interest rates have hit one big marker of the American dream — home ownership — especially hard. High mortgage costs mixed with low housing inventory and elevated prices have put that dream out of reach for a sizable number of Americans.

What else is eroding the American dream?

Soaring wealth and income inequality are probably the main fuel for the belief that the American dream is dying. Also, despite America's reputation as a land of opportunity, "there is less movement up and down the economic ladder here than in many other countries," a 2022 Brookings Institution report found. In America today, "wealth inequality is high. And wealth status is sticky," and this combination creates "sharp class divides which are at odds with the American dream."

Leonhardt primarily blames this stratification on the restructuring of the U.S. economy, from the democratic capitalism that helped create America's large middle class, to the laissez-faire "greed is good" policies that replaced it starting in the 1980s. And thanks to political shifts — Democrats, increasingly college-educated and socially liberal, haven't been able to win enough power to tip the economy back in the other direction, and Republicans aren't interested — "there is no longer a mass movement focused on improving economic outcomes for most Americans," he wrote in "Ours Was the Shining Future." "The country's largest activist groups, on both the left and the right, are focused on other subjects."

The "conventional explanation" for the decline of the American dream also posits that "globalization and technological change have made most Americans less competitive," Reich argued, but the larger cause is "the increasing concentration of political power in a corporate and financial elite" that have spent years "actively reorganizing the market for their own benefit" — and hoping you, the average-ish American, don't notice. 

At the same time, "centers of countervailing power that between the 1930s and 1980s enabled America's middle and lower-middle classes to exert their own influence — labor unions, small businesses, family farms and political parties anchored at the local and state levels — have withered," Reich added. Americans correctly perceive that "our economic and political system" is now "rigged," and "when most people stop believing they and their children have a fair chance" at the American dream that also damages America's social cohesion.

Can it be revived?

If "the American political system helped create today's problems," then surely "the American political system can solve them," Leonhardt wrote at the Times. The American dream was made real largely by organized labor, civil rights crusaders and other "often grass-roots political movements" that steadily nudged the government into creating the America they envisioned. If the revitalized labor movement and other groups representing the bottom 90% of Americans can coalesce into a "mass movement organized around the goal of lifting living standards" for the middle class and working class, he added, it "might well succeed. It has before."

American history "provides some direction as well as some comfort," Reich agreed, pointing to three specific periods when America successfully "readapted the rules of the political economy" to constrain "the political power of wealthy minorities at the top": the Jacksonian 1830s, turn-of-the-20th-century progressive reforms and the New Deal 1930s.

Are there other definitions of the American dream that show it in better shape?

The path to reviving the American dream depends on which dream you are trying to save. And it may not even need resuscitation, depending on whom you ask. 

An Axios-Ipsos Latino Poll from May 2022 found that 61% of Latinos agreed that if they work hard, they can achieve the American dream. That's because "the American dream is of individual upward mobility, not social progress toward uniformity," John Early and former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) wrote at the libertarian Cato Institute in January 2023. And that "American dream is alive and well." Three recent studies, they said, suggest that the "vast majority" of U.S. adults still "have higher income than their parents did." 

For many people, "the American dream is not about money or getting ahead in life," but rather "living your life to the fullest," Gabriel Nadales argued at The Hill . He pointed to a 2019 American Enterprise Institute study which found that only 16% of respondents said the American dream was to become wealthy, while 85% defined it as "the freedom of choice in how to live one's life." And that same poll, he added, found that "82% of Americans believed they were on their way to or had already achieved the American dream."

Look, "it is better to be born rich, brilliant and beautiful," Early and Gramm conceded, "but poor, ordinary and homely people succeed in America every day."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.  

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Essays About The American Dream: 7 Interesting Topics to Discuss

American Dream has main themes: hard work and equal opportunity create a better life over time. Discover essays about the American dream topics in this article.

The concept of the American dream includes many ideas, including those outlined in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Professional writers, high school students, and many people have worked to outline the meaning of the American dream in essays and research papers.

Many United States citizens operate under the assumption that working hard can elevate their financial and social status. Many people in American society grapple with whether the idea of the American dream is an attainable reality for those born into less-fortunate circumstances. While some argue that social mobility—meaning changes in social class based on effort and hard work—are at the core of the American dream, others argue that those who are born into a preferable situation may have an easier time achieving the dream, disputing the notion of an equal playing field.

Here, we’ll discuss 7 interesting essay topics on the American Dream that you can use in your next essay.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers

1. Is The American Dream Still Alive?

2. the american dream is still alive: these people are proof, 3. the american dream defined, 4. the american dream in literature, 5. what does the american dream look like for immigrants, 6. how has the american dream changed over time, the final word on essays about the american dream, what literary works discuss the american dream, what should be considered when writing an essay on the american dream’s existence.

A topic of much debate, it can be tough to figure out whether the American Dream continues to exist as it did half a century ago. Many people question whether the American Dream is a reality for that outside of the American family depicted in 1950s television and print ads—largely white, upper-middle-class families.

Suppose you decide to write about whether the American Dream still exists. In that case, you’ll want to consider the inflation of the cost of a college education that has made it impossible for many students to work and pay their way through college, resulting in debt that feels impossible upon graduation. Rather than a fresh start in life, many graduates face low-paying jobs that make it difficult to handle daily living costs while also paying back high-interest student loans.

As you write about why the American Dream is currently a struggle for many, include success stories that show how the American Dream is still being achieved by many. You may want to touch on how the traditional idea of the American dream is changing with time. You can do this by highlighting studies that explain how successful Americans today feel regarding the American Dream and how the tenants of a successful life are changing for many people. 

Want to show your audience that the American Dream is still alive and well? Highlighting the stories of people who have achieved success in their lives can be a great way to convey proof of the existence of the American Dream to others. 

As you write your essay, it’s important to share how the definition of the American dream has changed over time. Today, many people feel that the American dream has more to do with a sense of belonging and community than making a certain amount of money or living in a certain type of home. Research shows that across the United States of America, people generally shared a positive feeling about the possibility of achieving the American dream. Most felt that they either had achieved the dream or were on their way to achieving it.

As you write your essay on proof of the existence of the American Dream, be sure to highlight people from different backgrounds, sharing the different challenges they’ve faced throughout their lives. You’ll want to show how Americans achieve success despite challenges and different starting points and how they’ve enjoyed their success (despite having different definitions of what it means to achieve the American Dream).

In years past, the definition of the American Dream was clear: rising above circumstances, developing a successful financial portfolio, owning a home, and having kids in a successful marriage. Today, however, many people define the American Dream differently. In an essay on defining the American dream, it’s important to consider viewpoints from different cultures and how a person’s socioeconomic starting point affects their view of what it means to have “made it” in America. 

When defining the American Dream, you may want to touch on how social and economic issues in America have made the American Dream a more realistic possibility for some groups than others. Social programs, discrimination, and civil rights issues have made it tougher for some minority groups to climb above the standing they were born into, making it harder to achieve financial stability and other aspects of the American dream.

In your essay about defining the American Dream, you may also want to touch on the importance of being able to take risks. This can be easier for people whose parents and other relatives can provide a safety net. People who are dependent on their savings to support new business ventures may find it harder to take risks, making it more difficult to achieve the American dream. 

When defining the American Dream, be sure to touch on how the Dream can be different for different people and how one person’s financial stability might not be the same as someone else’s. If possible, include anecdotal quotes and stories to help your reader connect to the way you’re defining the American Dream.

Many pieces of classic American literature work to show what the American Dream means to various groups of people. In writing an essay about the American Dream in literature, you’ll want to discuss several different classic works, including The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. 

When discussing the theme of the American Dream in literature, there are a few different approaches that you can take to show your readers how the American Dream has changed in novels over time. You may want to work through a timeline showing how the American Dream has changed or talk about how real-life social and economic issues have been reflected in the way that authors discuss the American Dream. 

When writing about the American Dream, you may also want to touch on how each author’s social standing affected their view of the American Dream and whether the achievement of the Dream was feasible at the time. Authors born into difficult circumstances may have a different view of the American Dream than authors born into a more affluent lifestyle. 

Growing student debt, a lack of high-paying jobs, and increasing living costs have made it difficult for people to keep their faith in the American dream. Economic research shows that many first- and second-generation Americans experience economic mobility upward in immigrant families, but this mobility eventually stalls in future generations. According to some researchers, t’s possible that first- and second-generation immigrants feel more of a push to be a success story in an attempt to erase the negative connotations that some American citizens have with the word “immigrant.”

People who are new to the United States face different challenges than people who have lived in the country for their entire lives. Writing an essay about how the American Dream is different for people born in other countries can enlighten many of your readers about how the Dream is different for people in different circumstances.

The American Dream has not remained stagnant over the years, and what people once believed to be the American Dream is something that many Americans no longer want. Writing an essay about how the American dream has changed over time can be an interesting way to explore how the ideals of America have changed over the years. 

The wealth gap has changed over time in the United States, making it increasingly difficult for people born into a lower socioeconomic status to build their wealth and achieve the American dream. Research shows that more than 40% of people born into the lowest part of the income ladder in the United States stay there as adults. Talking about how economic challenges in the United States have made it difficult for many people to go through college or start businesses can be a jumping-off point to discussing changes in the American Dream. 

For many people, the ideals associated with the American dream—marriage, family, kids, a job that provides financial stability—are no longer as desirable. Some people don’t desire to get married, and it’s more acceptable in society to stay single. Some people have no desire to have kids, and some people prefer to work in the gig economy rather than going to a 9-5 job every day. Discussing these changes in American society and how they relate to changes in the American Dream can help your reader see how the Dream has changed over time.

In the eyes of many, the American dream is often associated with homeownership. Skyrocketing mortgage rates in the U.S. make it hard for many people to afford a home, relegating them to rent or living with family members. If you decide to talk about the difficulties of becoming a homeowner in today’s economy, do your research on the latest mortgage news. Many people who once qualified for mortgages struggle to get approved due to skyrocketing interest rates. Including recent financial news can help help your readers connect recent events with the reality of the American Dream.

Opinions on the American dream differ, and when writing about the topic, it’s important to keep your audience in mind. While some people have experienced at least part of the American dream, others have struggled despite hard work due to an unequal playing field from the start.

FAQs About Essays About The American Dream

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is well-known for their takes on the American dream.

When writing a persuasive or argumentive essay on the American dream, it’s important to consider social mobility, interest rates, homeownership rates, the cost of education, and other factors that contribute to creating a lucrative financial life.

If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Amanda has an M.S.Ed degree from the University of Pennsylvania in School and Mental Health Counseling and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. She has experience writing magazine articles, newspaper articles, SEO-friendly web copy, and blog posts.

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What Defines The American Dream Today?

What exactly is The American dream, and does it even exist anymore, and if so, does The American Dream have the same meaning today as it had in the past? Is The American Dream only for Americans, or do people from around the world still move to the U.S., hoping to achieve their dreams?

The phrase “American Dream” was invented during the Great Depression. It was the author James Truslow Adams who in his 1931 book Epic of America  wrote, “But there has been also The American Dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.” The years that followed after the Great Depression, The American Dream came true for many of the young people, but the definition of The American Dream has changed over the years.

The American Dream is considered an opportunity for success, and according to Adams, success is earning money. For others, success is all about family and happiness. My ancestors emigrated from Sweden to the United States, hoping for a better life. During that time, the definition of The American Dream was something different compared to what it is today. Back then, The American Dream was more about survival rather than success in terms of money. When one struggles to provide food and shelter for their families, any change for the better is success. The great majority of people who emigrated from Sweden to the U.S overcame difficulties and became successful in their eyes. A few years later, my ancestors returned to Sweden financially strong and were able to buy land and start over but this time with a more stable foundation. We do not need money and fancy cars in order to call ourselves successful. Sometimes food and a roof over our heads is what we wish to have and therefore, my ancestors were living what I define as The American Dream.

April is from Sweden. She came to the United States three years ago without any expectations. April believed she had the same opportunities to reach her goals in the U.S as in Sweden. “The reason I moved to the United States was that I wanted to start over and try something different.” April believes, “With high student loan debts and not being eligible to work, it is very hard to achieve my goals as an international student.”   Yet, t he world still sees America as the land of opportunities. There are around 1.18 million international students in the U.S today. The American Dream is not dead for international students — but it can come at a cost. April explains that for her, it is a dream about freedom and success in terms of happiness.

Gabriela grew up in Peru and was living there until a couple of years ago with her husband and their two young children in a poor town.  Gabriella admitted, “we were working long days for a minimum salary, which made it hard to provide enough food and shelter for the family.” Gabriela and her husband knew that they had to do something about the unsustainable situation. “I moved to the U.S not only to fulfill my dreams but also my families dreams. I have been on both sides, but today, I can finally say that things are going well for my family and me and compared to our lives before, we are now living the dream.”

The American Dream is still alive; it just depends on how you define it. For me, The American Dream is about success in terms of what you wish for. Compared to many other countries in the world, America is a place where you have the opportunity to determine your own success. The American Dream is also about getting an education, building a family and to reach happiness and satisfaction. In fact, it has a different meaning for each of us, but I’m sure we can all agree that the American Dream includes hope for a richer life with freedom and opportunity.

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Cecilia Rosell

Cecilia Rosell is an outgoing girl from Sweden. She is a BA student studying Communication and Media. Cecilia’s passions and background are in both photography and graphic design. Coming to Santa Barbara supports Cecilia’s goal of traveling and exploring the world. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time in nature with her camera, family, and friends.

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James Truslow Adams: Dreaming up the American Dream

Background on James Truslow Adams, who coined the phrase The American Dream.

With the 2016 Presidential election approaching, we can all be sure we’ll be hearing about the American Dream a lot in the coming months. Where did the concept come from?

There was, in fact, a founding father of the American Dream. He was James Truslow Adams and he coined the phrase in his 1931 bestseller The Epic of America . Adams, who was no relation to the Presidential Adamses, had actually wanted to name the book after his central thesis, but his publisher thought that a book called The American Dream wouldn’t sell well during the Great Depression.

Adams’s definition: “a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

He put it more succinctly elsewhere in the book: a “dream of a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.” This contemporary review of Epic notes that Adams alluded to the idea in fifty or more passages in the book. The unnamed reviewer thought Adams believed the dream to be “our greatest contribution to the thought of the world.”

Adams himself was born fortuitously into a wealthy Brooklyn family and became a successful investment banker before transforming himself into a best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. This  short essay on Chief Justice John Marshall  published in  The American Scholar  shows he didn’t talk down to a popular audience. The piece is dense and closely-argued, and goes to the heart of the question about just what kind of democracy we have, and might have in the future—his notion that the nation-state was on the way out may have been premature.

Calling something a dream is a tricky proposition, since matching “a better, richer and happier life for all” to today’s economic disparities, limited social mobility, and the overweening power of money in politics makes it sound like a far-fetched fantasy indeed.

Adams himself was clear-eyed: he wrote the American Dream “has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.”

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Descriptive Essay – What is the American Dream?

The American dream has always been a staple of American culture. When people speak of it, they often refer back to the first half of the 20th century. Despite this, the American Dream is just as relevant to American culture today as it was in the last century. In this essay, we will explore the American dream and just what it is.

Firstly, it’s important to mention the American dream isn’t measured based on what an individual has. It has to be measured on its principles and how they apply to society. Although the American dream isn’t as distinct from the rest of the world as it once was, it still makes America what it is today.

The first part of the American dream is the dream of abundance. The dream of abundance is the ability of America to have a country filled with material goods. It remains the envy of the world today as a nation of producers and consumers. Few countries can match the sheer range of goods America has.

Next, we have the dream of a democracy of goods. This is the ability of everyone to purchase the goods of America, regardless of where they come from and who they are. It links back to the constitutional right of everyone to be free and equal. To fulfil this part of the constitution, the dream of a democracy of goods has to exist.

The dream of freedom of choice is the third part of the American dream and, again, ties back in to the American constitution. It allows people to fashion their own lifestyles using the goods on offer. People have the freedom to be who they want to be, and they aren’t restricted by the supply of goods on offer.

Finally, we have the dream of novelty. This represents a broadening of consumer choice. Fashions are allowed to change at will. It has a deep impact on American society. It means the current skills in demand are forever changing. The people don’t have to specialise in specific areas just to get along in life. They can be sure there will always be a demand for niche skills, which allows them more freedom of choice.

One can say the American dream has been born out of the constitution. It’s the constitution that allows it to exist. Without the rights enshrined in this document, the American dream wouldn’t be able to persevere.

Today, the American dream is still relevant. How people achieve this dream has changed, but the basic principles of it haven’t. The difference today is young people may go to college instead of an apprenticeship to go about their pursuit of the American dream.

In conclusion, the American dream is about both choice in the consumer industry and unlimited freedom of choice. These are principles Americans demand in everything they do. In many ways, the American dream has grown to symbolise more than just the consumer industry. The American dream is a symbol of a strong America as a whole.

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Home — Essay Samples — Economics — American Dream — Broken Ambition: Why is the American Dream not Attainable

Broken Ambition: Why is The American Dream not Attainable

• Categories: American Dream Reality

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Words: 1001 |

Published: Jan 21, 2020

Words: 1001 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

American dream essay: hook ideas, american dream essay example.

• The Illusion of Prosperity: Step into a world where dreams are woven into the fabric of the American identity. Join me in unraveling the harsh reality behind the elusive American Dream and why it often remains just that—an unattainable dream.
• An Eye-Opening Quote: As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Let's delve into the societal currents that impede the journey toward the American Dream and keep individuals from reaching their aspirations.
• The Myth of Equal Opportunity: Explore with me the disparities in access to education, wealth, and opportunities that hinder the realization of the American Dream for many. Together, we'll uncover the systemic barriers that persist.
• The Human Cost of Ambition: Delve into the personal stories of those who have chased the American Dream and found themselves disillusioned. Join me in examining the toll that relentless ambition can take on individuals and families.
• Redefining Success: As we question the attainability of the traditional American Dream, consider how we might redefine success and aspirations in a changing society, one that values well-being, equity, and fulfillment over material wealth.

Works Cited

• Autor, D. H. (2014). Skills, education, and the rise of earnings inequality among the “other 99 percent”. Science, 344(6186), 843-851.
• Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1553-1623.
• Collins, C., & Ganong, P. (2019). Has rising inequality reduced middle-class income growth? Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved from https://www.epi.org/publication/has-rising-inequality-reduced-middle-class-income-growth/
• Deaton, A., & Case, A. (2015). Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(49), 15078-15083.
• Piketty, T., & Saez, E. (2014). Inequality in the long run. Science, 344(6186), 838-843.
• Stiglitz, J. E. (2012). The price of inequality: How today's divided society endangers our future. WW Norton & Company.
• Temin, P. (2017). The vanishing middle class: Prejudice and power in a dual economy. MIT Press.
• United Nations Development Programme. (2019). Human development indices and indicators 2018 statistical update. Retrieved from http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/137506
• Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2018). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• World Economic Forum. (2020). The global social mobility report 2020. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-report-2020

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