Americans are increasingly struggling to save enough for retirement. If Social Security isn’t saved, growing old in poverty will likely become more common.
Articles on American Dream
Displaying 21 - 40 of 40 articles
Conventional wisdom across much of the Western world says there’s a strong link between education and upward social mobility. Really?
Middle-class houses in the US have grown ever larger. The average single-family home is almost twice the size of a home in the 1960s. It’s time to consider the downsides of sizing up.
Americans’ widespread belief that they live in a meritocracy where anyone can get ahead actually makes inequality even worse, particularly in terms of gender.
Post-World War II California built an unrivalled system of higher education combining access, affordability and choice. Then a contraction of the vision came in the 1980s.
In 1978, Californians voted to pass Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes and ushered in an era of underinvestment, ending the ‘California dream’ for many.
Anti-immigrant policies ignore that American ideals like liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness can be traced back to the indigenous pioneers who once moved freely across North America.
Knott’s Berry Farm and others romanticize the state’s past and influence visitors’ sense of history. But their ideology reflects mid-20th-century political conservatism more than settlers’ reality.
To the recently deceased playwright, the nation’s greatest tragedy was its move from an agricultural society to an urban, industrial one.
One of Trump’s selling points was that he would ‘make America great again’: this meant bringing back the American dream.
‘American Idol’ fittingly appeared nine months after 9/11 – and ends just in time for Donald Trump’s rise.
We kick off our collaboration with Point Taken, a new debate program from WGBH TV.
Falling homeownership rates, stagnant wages and diminishing retirement savings mean that for more and more Americans, the middle-class dream is slowly dying – if it’s not already gone.
Talk about the future of work is in the air these days, but will all the chatter lead to action and better living standards for tomorrow’s workers?
Anne Tyler’s Booker short-listed novel is an exquisite meditation on family life.
Do academics need to change the way they teach race? What is the impact of students having been socialized to believe that “race doesn’t matter”?
Even though America claims to be a society based on hard work and meritocracy, rewards go only to those with the right college degree.
Robert Putnam’s new book aims to make the social inequality a core issue in the 2016 campaign: a member of his research team explains how.
Warning: this article contains spoilers. The Oscar nominations loom, and Bennett Miller’s quiet masterpiece Foxcatcher deserves recognition. The film is a genuine “state of the nation” story, something…
Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…
Top contributors
-
Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
-
Professor of Social Welfare, Washington University in St. Louis
-
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Birmingham-Southern College
-
Lecturer in Economics and Social Statistics, UCL
-
Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Education, Brock University
-
Professor of Law, The University of Texas at Austin
-
Adjunct Professor of English, Bridgewater State University
-
Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies and Dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, Cornell University
-
Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London
-
PhD candidate at the LSE and Research Fellow at the Superpower Institute, The University of Melbourne
-
Brookings Institution Senior Fellow and College Park Professor, University of Maryland
-
University Research Professor, University of Kentucky
-
Archaeologist, University of Oklahoma
-
Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
-
Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, Bowling Green State University