If the American Dream means hard work leads to getting ahead, most Californians no longer believe it

Seventy percent of the state’s residents think kids in the state will be financially worse off than their parents.

 By Mark Kreidler, Capital & Main

This story is produced by the award-winning journalism nonprofit Capital & Main and co-published here with permission.

In 2024, California remains a land of plenty — for some. The state’s status as an economic power is indisputable; in addition to contributing far more than any other state to the nation’s gross domestic product, California on its own is firmly established as the world’s fifth-largest economy, something the governor’s office is happy to note.

For decades, though, California’s soaring cost of living, reflected especially in its runaway housing and health care costs, has put the squeeze on individuals and families trying to establish a toehold or build a better future.

Wages, although they’re been gaining at the lower ends, haven’t kept pace with those costs. The state’s poverty ratehas escalated alarmingly over the past couple of years. Homelessness is on the rise. And the gulf between rich and poor in the Golden State is among the highest in the nation.

Given all that, perhaps the most recent results of an annual state survey shouldn’t be shocking. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, only one in three adults here thinks the American dream still holds true — that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead.

More than 50% of those surveyed said that the axiom used to be true, but no longer is. Another 15% said the bootstraps analogy was never real. The American dream? A full 70% of all respondents think that kids growing up in California today will be worse off financially than their parents. That’s up 15 percentage points since the question was first asked 10 years ago.

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The survey, titled Californians and Their Economic Well-Being, was created in 1998 by Mark Baldassare, who has directed the project for the Public Policy Institute of California ever since. This year’s findings are based on responses from 2,344 adult residents who were surveyed beginning Nov. 6, the day after the general election.

While it’s impossible to know how Donald Trump’s election to a new term as president affected the responses about long-term issues, some of those responses are simply consistent across the spectrum of California residents.

On the question of financial futures, 67% of Democrats said kids in California will grow up to be worse off than their parents. Among Republicans, 80% felt that way; for independent voters it was 79%. And among the major geographical areas represented in the survey, that sentiment — of a tougher road ahead for California’s youth — held remarkably steady, from San Diego and Orange County to the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition, “Majorities of Californians are expecting bad times financially for the state economy in the next 12 months,” Baldassare said — another response that held true across each of the major regions surveyed.

More than a quarter of the respondents said they worry every day or almost every day about paying for housing. More than 20% said they would consider leaving California because of the lack of well-paying jobs. Three in 10 said they had cut back on meals or food in the past year to save money, and two in 10 said it would be very difficult — or nearly impossible — to pay for a $1,000 emergency expense.

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Where does the state go with this kind of feedback? The survey’s respondents have ideas about that.

By large majorities, they want the government to invest in job training programs that will help equip Californians for the kinds of work that are going to be needed in years to come. That is especially poignant considering that half the employed people surveyed believe artificial intelligence will reduce the number of jobs available in their fields.

And Californians continue to want something they’ve wanted for decades: affordable child care. While this issue isn’t remotely new, it has taken on greater urgency at a time when both parents in a household need to have a job in order to pay the mortgage or rent — and when education, for many, is the way forward to better-paying work.

What the state will be able to provide is an open question. It’s still unclear what the Trump administration may attempt in terms of reducing federal revenue to states, and the president-elect has often mentioned programs like Medicaid (known here as Medi-Cal) as target areas for cuts.

Those funding reductions could dramatically alter California’s ability to provide low- or no-cost health care to families in need. And researchers say deep cuts could also force tough budget decisions elsewhere for the state, potentially impacting such areas as child care.

The issues certainly aren’t going away. Last year, Brenda Mendoza, a hotel worker in Los Angeles, told Capital & Main that despite multiple wage earners in her family, they couldn’t afford life in her native L.A., and finally moved away after nearly 15 years there. They relocated to a town in San Bernardino County — a 200-mile round trip commute each day to their respective jobs. “We wanted our own house to live in,” Mendoza said. “We did what we had to do.”

Mendoza and her husband equated having a home with living the American dream. But that has come with a steep price, both literally and figuratively — and as the latest survey shows, grabbing even a small piece of the dream strikes most Californians as unlikely.

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