For a significant percentage of Americans, it seems as though a gloomy future is on the horizon over the next five years, new polling from Gallup indicates. It said that the percentage of U.S. adults anticipating “high-quality” lives in five years plunged to a nearly two-decade low of 59.2% by the end of last year.
“Since 2020, future life ratings have fallen a total of 9.1 percentage points, projecting to an estimated 24.5 million fewer people who are optimistic about the future now versus then,” said Gallup in a Tuesday press release. “Most of that decline occurred between 2021 and 2023, but the ratings dropped 3.5 points between 2024 and 2025.”
Future life rating scores among Democrats and Hispanic adults drove that drop, Gallup noted. While Democrat, Republican and independent voter future life optimism dropped around five percentage points across the board from 2021 to 2024, Democrats’ overall optimism rating dropped 7.6 points last year and independents’ rating dropped 1.5 points. Republicans’ rating stayed “essentially the same.”
“It is common for life ratings to swing negatively or positively among political partisans when party control of the White House changes,” Gallup explained, referring to Republican President Donald Trump taking office last year. “Between 2020 and 2021, Democrats’ optimism grew by 4.4 points, while Republicans’ dropped by 5.9, mostly canceling each other out across the full population.”
These ratings are determined by answer to Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index surveys. The 2025 results are based on 22,125 interviews with U.S. adults who are part of the Gallup Panel, a probability-based panel encompassing all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Participants are asked to rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale numbered from zero to 10 based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale and placed into three categories: thriving, struggling and suffering.
“Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you,” they were asked. “On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now?”
Black Americans have typically had the most positive answers to this question. However, their optimism eroded from 2021 to 2024 (6.6 points) and it dropped again last year by 2.2 points. Among white, Black and Hispanic Americans future optimism dropped nearly 5 points from 2021 to 2024, and 3.5-points last year. Hispanic Americans had the steepest 2025 drop at 6 points, while future optimism among white Americans dropped 4.6 points.
Trump’s second term in the White House so far has included highly publicized crackdowns on illegal immigration focused on claims of violent criminals entering the U.S. from countries south of the U.S./Mexico border. These crackdowns have resulted in arrests, deportations and killings – including the fatal shootings of two white U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents.
According to Gallup, “the drop in future life ratings since 2021 likely indicates that multiple mechanisms are at work,” including high inflation, continuing economic challenges and post-COVID-19 pandemic issues. Gallup said the change in administrations is likely a contributing factor in last year’s decline.
“Americans’ ratings of their current lives have also declined since rebounding in 2021 but not as steeply as their future life ratings,” Gallup said. “And current life ratings are not at a low point; that occurred in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
When ratings for both current and future lives were accounted for, the percentage of Americans who classified as “thriving” was down to 48%, an 11-point drop compared to the 59.2% high recorded in 2021, around six months after COVID vaccines were first rolled out.