THE AMERICAN DREAM LIVES AND HAS GROWN STRONGER, with freedom now in first place.
That's the bottom line to a Roper Report that has been tracking attitudes and beliefs about the American Dream since 1986. For a long time, the most important element of the American Dream was home ownership. But recently this has been overtaken by freedom as the most important component of the dream.
Perhaps the most significant change in the Dream, however, is that freedom has replaced home ownership as its top-ranked feature. Three in four adults, up 5 points from 2000, say that having “freedom of choice in how to live one’s life” is “very much” a part of the American Dream, edging out “to own a home” by 4 percentage points. In all previous readings, freedom tied with home ownership or was slightly behind.-- Roper Reports, Public Pulse -- June 24, 2004 "The findings in this report are drawn from surveys of adults conducted between October 1986 and February 2004. “The American Dream” 1986 study was conducted for The Wall Street Journal; all succeeding surveys were conducted as part of the Roper Reports service. Posted by Vanderleun at June 24, 2004 1:12 PMOn the other hand, freedom for oneself and equality for all are not totally in sync. There has been no similar gain in the share who feel that living “in an open society in which everyone has an equal chance” defines the Dream, although this still ranks third after freedom and owning a home.
These slight shifts aside, the American Dream is defined much as it has been in the past, more by quality of life than quantity of cash, more by a “rewarding career and family life” and the financial security to retire and to enjoy leisure time than by getting wealthy and being “able to buy all the things one wants.” For more than half, it means having an enjoyable job or moving up the generational ladder by doing “better than one’s parents did.” And for half of adults, the Dream still conjures visions of the ragsto- riches story popularized more than 100 years ago by Horatio Alger Jr.’s novels – i.e., being “able to start a business of one’s own” or rising “from clerk or worker to president of a company.” Not to mention the possibility of becoming president of the country.
