Americans are in a negative mood about the current state of the country with large majorities expressing dissatisfaction with the economy and overall national conditions. And when they look toward the not-too-distant future, they see a country that in many respects will be worse than it is today, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Sizable majorities of U.S. adults say that in 2050 – just over 25 years away – the U.S. economy will be weaker, the United States will be less important in the world, political divisions will be wider and there will be a larger gap between the rich and the poor. Far fewer adults predict positive developments in each of these areas.
And when Americans reflect on the country’s past, the present looks worse by comparison. Around six-in-ten (58%) say that life for people like them is worse today than it was 50 years ago, according to the survey, which was conducted from March 27 to April 2.
Despite these negative attitudes, a majority of Americans say they generally have at least some confidence in the future of the U.S. But far fewer have quite a lot of confidence, and the share of Americans who express confidence in the country’s future has declined over the past year.
Views of specific problems have also become more negative over the past five years. For each of the four items included in the new survey, Americans today are about 10 percentage points more likely to offer a negative prediction than they were when asked to think about the year 2050 in a separate survey conducted by the Center in 2018. For example, 77% of Americans now expect the nation to be more politically divided in 2050 – up from 65% who made that prediction five years ago.
While majorities in both parties make negative predictions for the country’s future across all four items in the survey, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are somewhat more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to have pessimistic views. In 2018, midway through Donald Trump’s term as president, Democrats’ predictions were more negative than Republicans’ on three of the four areas.
White adults are particularly likely to foresee a diminished U.S. in 2050. For example, 69% of White adults anticipate a weaker U.S. economy in 2050, compared with smaller shares of Hispanic (60%), Black (58%) and Asian (55%) adults. There are only modest age differences on each of the four items.
Americans’ negative views of the nation’s future are influenced by their bleak assessments of current conditions. Only 19% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, while 80% are dissatisfied. Ratings of the economy remain largely negative, and an increasing share of the public expects economic conditions to worsen over the next year.
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