For several months, I’ve been collecting comments from various online and print sources about The American Dream. I have been intrigued to find that most of those references did not define The Dream, seemingly assuming we all know what it is. But a firm definition is elusive.
My conclusion (repeated below) is that the majority of Americans no longer take as inevitable that hard work will assure financial success and upward social mobility. Instead, they are focused on defining realistic goals that may not always be measured in financial terms. What follows are my comments on several of the dozens of references I have discovered (and I’m sure there are many more).
Many commentaries revealed an implied definition, yet there was not universal agreement among those descriptions of The Dream. The two most common dreams are that:
we will be better off financially than were our parents
we have the opportunity to secure an education and pursue the career of our choosing
What strikes me about most of the (sometimes implied) characterizations of The American Dream is that there is no direct mention of the quality of life. The second bullet above hints at that, but in the telling, it is often that the desirable careers are the ones that pay the most. The assumption seems to be that money buys happiness, and to some extent that is true, but then again, the love of money is the root of all evil.
Perhaps The Dream is undergoing transmutation. I’ll mention later some candidates for The Dream becoming more about life satisfaction and less about financial success.
I did find one writer (Hua Hsu) who claims to have pinpointed the origin of the phrase. He cites a book, The Epic of America, by James Truslow Adams, in which Hsu says Adams “did come up with the catchiest way of describing it” — Wikipedia is a bit more restrained in giving Adams credit for coining the phrase, saying
He popularized the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book The Epic of America.
Adams defines it as
… 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. [...] It 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.
Both sources (Hsu and Wikipedia) admit that The Great American Dream predates the 20th century, although it was described in other words. As Hsu puts it
Adams was not the first to suggest that Americans held an optimistic faith in tomorrow
This section is mine and mine alone, not quoting from anyone else. I’m not surprised that our indigenous people are ignored in this discussion.
It took four hundred years for the European Colonists to wrest control of the North American continent from the Natives. They did it by breaking treaties and stealing land, often at gunpoint. And all of that was part of the Colonial American Dream (q.v. “Manifest Destiny”).
So let’s take a step back, long before the Great Depression. Who were the first Americans, and what was their dream?
America, as I learned in grammar school, is a word that comes from the name of the European explorer Amerigo Vespucci.1 The first people to be called Americans were the original Natives of this land. Once European colonies were established in the New World, the children of the first colonists thought of themselves as natives and began to call themselves Americans.
In my part of the world (meaning the northeast corner of North America), the Algonkian and Haudenosaunee cultures share a belief that dreams result from the soul traveling to the spirit world during sleep. This allows contact with ancestors, and provides advice on naming children, warnings of future events, where to find food, and other assistance. The Ojibwe (an Algonkian people), and others, made dreamcatchers. These woven hoops were traditionally hung above beds to filter out bad dreams.
This view of actual dreams, as you may have figured out, is a digression from the common understanding of The American Dream, which is not something that comes to us during sleep. Rather, it is a waking fantasy containing our fondest hopes.
In that respect, indigenous American culture had a vision of a world for the seventh generation (a poetic way of saying “a long time from now” or “into the indefinite future”). That dream, one of a sustainable and stable world, has been destroyed by Colonization.
If you’re interested in learning more about the history of The Dream from a strictly Colonial point of view, the Wikipedia entry would be a good place to start.
My overall finding is that there is not a generally accepted definition of The American Dream (although many descriptions, explicit or implied, are similar).
Yet I detect a growing feeling that whatever it is (or has been), The American Dream is slipping away — becoming less attainable now than it was in the past. This is especially worrisome to younger people, who are just starting out on their quest.
With income and wealth inequality becoming more and more ingrained in our Capitalistic society, making financial success less and less likely for the average person, the cure seems to be to reformulate The Dream. A new version, to make it truly aspirational, will have to depend less on financial rewards and more on psychic satisfaction.
Interesting sidelight: I was working on Wall Street in the 1980s when Michael Milken made his fortune as the “Junk Bond King” and later served time in a federal penitentiary.
Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump in February 2020. In September 2025, Milken officially opened the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD) in Washington, D.C., an interactive museum that features artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators in health and education.
A recent article in The Hill cites an MCAAD-Gallup American Dream Study:
46 percent of respondents said they either “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” with the idea that “everyone in this country has the opportunity to achieve the American Dream” — down from 51 percent in 2024.
54 percent in the poll said they either “strongly disagree” or “somewhat disagree” with the idea that everyone in the U.S. has the chance to achieve the American Dream — up from 49 percent in 2024.
This article about “Redefining the American Dream” discusses the fading Dream, and proposes that “Maybe the American Dream is to stay agile and to find things that are meaningful to you.“ Sounds a bit like the Serenity Prayer, does it not? [Another personal aside: I told the story in an earlier post of living across the street from Reinhold Niebuhr when I was a young boy growing up in Stockbridge.]
In a similar vein is a rather long discussion of generational shifts in aspiration. Shikha Jain is a Simon-Kucher partner and lead of their consumer sector for North America. In a study involving 5,000 people in different age groups:
"The American dream is still alive, but it's no longer defined by a shared and uniform vision from long ago, pining for home ownership, raising a family, achieving financial stability, and marked by hard work," Jain said. "Today, the new American dream is very personal and represents making life work today, by making ends meet, covering daily expenses, and enjoying meaningful experiences."
In an article in USA TODAY, there is a discussion about the premise that “For decades, the American dream meant upward mobility, but many young people today define it as simply achieving stability.“
My conclusion is that the majority of Americans no longer take as inevitable that hard work will assure upward social mobility. Instead, they are focused on defining realistic goals that may not always be measured in financial terms.
Following is a list of five random examples I’ve found of comments on how The American Dream is fading. I think these (and there are many others) illustrate the problems we all face.
On March 31, 2026, JP Morgan announced an “American Dream Initiative to expand local economic opportunity” — again, they did not define The Dream, but they made it clear that the bank is looking for 3 million more small businesses to add to the 7 million that already have as customers. “The American Dream is alive, but it’s slipping out of reach for too many people—and for future generations,” said Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorganChase. “By reigniting the American Dream through smart local investments and policies that we know work, we can work together to make the economy benefit more people—helping them buy homes, get good jobs and build better lives.” This smacks of the Trickle Down Theory — by making wealthy business owners even wealthier, somehow that will benefit everyone in the community. I’d say this is not The American Dream — rather it is a Pipe Dream.
William F. Tate IV, President of Rutgers University wrote an opinion piece in which he stated, “I have dedicated my professional life to creating educational opportunities and advancing social mobility. It is my contribution to helping others experience the American Dream as I have.“ Based on that alone, I would say he defines The Dream as social advancement. The problem with that is that for every person who rises in rank, another person sinks. He goes on, however, to expand his vision: “…the American Dream’s ideas of opportunity, self-improvement, reason, moral responsibility, public service and the advancement of the common good predate the Revolutionary War.“ Despite his high-flung rhetoric, he ends up bragging that Rutgers gives equal opportunity to students with a wide variety of backgrounds to “go on to successful careers“ — in other words, to become members of the elite. Nothing wrong with that as the mission of an educational institution, but in my thinking The American Dream should be one that every American can dream.
NPR published a dialog on how The American Dream has entered pop culture, especially in the movies. One of the participants says “I am aware that the meaning of the American dream that gets used the most often is an idea of universally achievable economic security and upward mobility, which is something that has never been real.“
Here’s one example of an undefined reference:
A new PRRI [the Public Religion Research Institute] poll of more than 5,400 Americans shows rising pessimism about democracy, the American Dream and the country’s direction…
Only 49% say the American Dream still holds true, with belief falling to 36% among adults aged 18‑29 and remaining strongest among Republicans (76%).
If the PRRI has a definition, it isn’t shared in this summary.
In one post, CNBC also has a list of other articles they have published on The Next Dream “exploring how the modern-day pursuits of success and happiness are reshaping our lives 250 years after America’s first dream was born.
They say, “Owning a home has long been part of the American Dream, second only to reaching financial stability. But in the country’s 250th year, many Americans feel the goal, a milestone of adulthood and a marker of financial success, eludes them.”
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