The Gallup poll dropped this week with a stat that should make everyone pause: only 59.2% of Americans expect their lives to be better in five years.
That’s the lowest number since they started tracking this nearly 20 years ago — and it’s down from 68.3% just five years ago.
Translation: roughly 24.5 million fewer people believe things are going to get better.
Not “things are bad right now.” Not “I’m struggling today.”
They don’t believe the future will be better.
The Gap Between Now and Later Keeps Widening
The data are split into two measures: how people rate their current lives and how they rate their future lives.
Current life ratings dropped — but they’re not at rock bottom. That happened in 2020, mid-pandemic, when everything felt like it was collapsing in real time.
But future life ratings? Those have been in free fall since 2021. Most of the damage occurred between 2021 and 2023, but another 3.5-point decline occurred between 2024 and 2025.
The gap isn’t about today being unbearable. It’s about tomorrow looking worse.
Who Lost Hope the Fastest
The erosion isn’t evenly distributed.
Black adults saw the steepest decline in optimism between 2021 and 2024 — likely tied to disproportionate impacts from inflation, housing insecurity, and healthcare access.
But Hispanic adults took the hardest hit in the past year, with optimism dropping faster than any other demographic group.
Then there’s the political split, which went from predictable to stark.
Between 2021 and 2024, Democrats, Republicans, and independents all dropped about five points. Partisan, but balanced.
Then 2025 hit.
Democrats’ optimism cratered another 7.6 points. Independents edged down 1.5 points. Republicans stayed flat.
The change in administration didn’t just shift sentiment — it cleaved it.
Inflation Did More Damage Than the Pandemic
The 2021-to-2023 collapse in future optimism coincides almost perfectly with inflation peaking at 7.0% in 2021 and hovering at 6.5% in 2022.
Affordability challenges didn’t just sting — they rewired expectations.
When rent, groceries, and gas all spike simultaneously, people stop believing the system will self-correct. They stop believing they can outrun it.
The pandemic was a crisis with a visible endpoint. Inflation is a gradual process with no clear endpoint.
The “Thriving” Rate Is Near Its All-Time Low
Gallup classifies individuals as “thriving” if they rate both their current and future lives highly enough—a 7 or higher now and 8 or higher in five years.
As of Q4 2025, only 48% of Americans meet that threshold. That’s down from 59.2% in mid-2021 — right after the vaccine rollout, when hope felt justified.
At what times was the thriving rate lower? The Great Recession and the early pandemic.
We’re not in a recession. We’re not in a pandemic.
But the optimism data says we might as well be.
What This Actually Means
This isn’t just vibes. It’s not just “people are grumpy.”
When optimism drops this low, it changes behavior — spending, risk-taking, career moves, family planning. People hunker down. They stop betting on better.
The mechanisms are clear: inflation eroded purchasing power, political polarization fractured shared reality, and demographic groups experienced wildly different versions of the same economy.
The 2020 drop was due to current life satisfaction declining, while future hope remained intact. This time, it’s the opposite — people are managing today, but they don’t believe tomorrow will improve.
That’s a different kind of despair.