Was the American Dream ever real? Or was it a mirage?

With so many young people burdened by student loan debt and questioning whether they'll ever be able to afford a home, it's a question worth asking. It's a question worth mulling over when older Americans are working longer – not because they’re bored, but because grocery bills are busting their budgets, their children need support deep into adulthood, and the pensions that once knit together a financial safety net are for many a long-ago memory.

A series of stories by USA TODAY reporters reveals how ephemeral and tenuous the so-called American Dream has become, and also how a younger generation is setting its own terms for what constitutes a life of financial stability and fulfillment.

Child care more expensive than college in many states

The realities are stark.

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A first-time homebuyer would need an income of roughly $64,500 a year to buy a so-called starter home, according to Redfin. That’s 13% more than what was needed just a year ago, and what's necessary to purchase a smaller property that typically sold for $243,000 in June – a record high.

Among millennials, student loans make up 36% of their debt, the highest of any generation.  In 28 states, childcare is more expensive than the cost for a student to attend a public college in their home state, according to lending platform NetCredit.com.

And it’s expected to cost a middle-income, married couple, $233,610 to raise a child born in 2015 through their 17^th birthday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

It’s no wonder 65% of Gen Zers and nearly 3 in 4 millennials say they feel their financial starting point is far behind where previous generations were at the same age, according to an online poll of more than 2,000 U.S. adults conducted exclusively for USA TODAY by The Harris Poll. And two-thirds of Americans agree that younger people are dealing with difficulties that earlier generations didn’t have to.

“They're telling us they can't buy into that American Dream the way that their parents and grandparents thought about it ‒ because it's not attainable,” said The Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema. 

Segregation, urban renewal, made the American Dream hard to attain

Of course, dreams, by their very definition, are aspirational with no assurance they can become reality. They shimmer in the distance, or in our imaginations.

One person may feel they've missed the mark if they don't become a multi-millionaire. For others, a comfortable home, a family and a little extra cash in the bank is more than enough.

Whatever the nuances, the American Dream is fundamental to the American identity, and there is little doubt that some iteration of it loomed large for the 967,500 people who became American citizens last fiscal year, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

My mother was an immigrant. Though she grew up in an affluent family in her native Guyana, she says she and her peers would read American magazines, watch Hollywood epics and imagine that the streets here were paved with gold. When she came to the U.S. to attend college and graduate school, brushes with racism tarnished the fantasy. But she, together with my father, forged a good life, and when she officially became a U.S. citizen in the early 1970s, the photos at the celebration show her smiling, triumphant and proud.

Yet the American Dream has always been hazy, its contours in the eye of the beholder. Depending on who you were, and from where you came, the ladder up was often missing a few rungs, and many had to pull themselves up with no ladder at all.

Maybe your piece of the American Dream was bulldozed for a freeway, like the many Black and brown residents whose homes were demolished in the 1950s and ’60s in the name of urban renewal. Maybe it was denied because you loved someone of the same gender and weren’t allowed to marry. Or perhaps your dream languished because pay inequities based on your being a woman or a person of color made it difficult to build and hold onto generational wealth.

Despite the odds, the dream wasn’t impossible.  Among Black Americans, 38% owned a home in 1960, though that was far below the 65% of white Americans who had property. But the hurdles that had to be overcome were arduous. Redlining denied loans to those who were trying to buy homes in minority neighborhoods. Segregation and housing discrimination were rampant. Owning the place where you lived, a cornerstone of the American ideal, was a pillar that was hard won.

The Fair Housing Act passed in 1968 made redlining illegal. But still today, lawsuits have found that appraisers assign lower values to homes owned by Black people compared with their white counterparts. The gap between white home-owning households and those that are Black (73% vs. 44%) is greater now than it was in 1960, according to the Urban Institute.    

It's also very hard to get ahead when you don't earn enough. Women are paid 82 cents for every dollar earned on average by a man, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center. Black and Hispanic women (70% and 65% respectively) are paid even less.

And while the ability to obtain an abortion legally in the wake of the Roe vs. Wade decision being overturned raised the likelihood of women finishing college by nearly 20%, the Supreme Court decision in June 2022 that took away that federal protection now puts the economic stability and advancement of millions of women in jeopardy.    

Forging a new American Dream

I know from my own conversations with Generation Zers that many resent having to clean up a mess largely caused by their elders. Still, the future belongs to the young.

Maybe a generation that has had to face the grimmest of realities, from a once-in-a-century pandemic to a relentless plague of gun violence to a democracy in stunning decline, no longer has the optimism to dream at all. They are fighting for survival, to reshape a world they did not make, and so they don’t have time to wish and wonder.

Or perhaps they are curating a different sort of dream.

Members of Gen Z save more and also spend more on what they truly care about. That’s a worthy change. Debt, while often necessary, can be suffocating, so if you must take it on, why not make sure it’s for what gives your life purpose and joy?

Buy a house to have an abode to call your own, or a haven that frees you from the whims of a landlord, not just so you can keep up with the proverbial Joneses.  Choose college if it’s a building block for your desired career. But if an apprenticeship will get you where you want to go, that should be fine, too.

And while raising a family can give you contentment that’s hard to convey, if you don’t want a spouse and 2.5 kids, it’s too significant a responsibility to take on just because society says you should.      

In a piece written by USA TODAY reporters Bailey Schulz and Kathleen Wong, Matt Marino, a 27-year-old teacher in New York City said that while his peers see owning their own house as “impossible,’’ they would also prefer to have “more freedom,’’ such as being able to do work that they love. 

How liberating it must be to care less about status than about having a life where you have the bandwidth to truly enjoy the fruits of your labor.

How gratifying that the ability to breathe fresh air and preserve the Earth means more to many young adults than a bottomless pile of material possessions. 

Whatever version of the American Dream you aspire to, if that vision is to be preserved, all of us, across generations, must commit to making it a real possibility for all.

Is the American Dream still possible?How younger workers are redefining success

How much does it cost to raise a child?College may no longer be the biggest expense.

That’s not easy when too many continue to view financial insecurity as a mark of personal failure. It’s a tall task when some believe certain Americans, based on their gender, race, sexual identity or immigration status, are less worthy of opportunity, comfort and freedom, than others.

But one can dream.