Polls and headlines keep suggesting that fewer Americans think the American Dream is still attainable, especially amid housing costs and economic anxiety. A new book, Debating the American Dream, discusses how Americans explain this sense that the American dream is slipping away – and how politics plays an important part. I sent the book’s author, American University political scientist Elizabeth Suhay, some questions about the book and she kindly replied. A lightly edited transcript is below.
John Sides: When you say we’re “debating the American Dream,” what exactly is being debated? What’s at stake in that debate?
Elizabeth Suhay: Americans almost uniformly believe in the American Dream as an ideal. We believe that a middle-class lifestyle should be available to everyone willing to work hard. The other side of the coin is that Americans will accept substantial economic inequality, even poverty, if they believe it is a consequence of some people refusing to be productive members of society.
What is up for debate is whether our nation lives up to the American Dream ideal. Are hard workers flourishing economically? Are the enormous inequalities we observe today – from billionaires to homeless people – the consequence of some people just working much harder than others? More and more Americans are saying “no.” Yet, the public is divided, with many people convinced that the economy remains meritocratic.
Where voters land on these questions is very consequential politically. What’s at stake is our nation’s economic policy and especially whether our political leaders will enact changes that improve the economic prospects of low- and middle-income Americans.
A big claim in your book is that politics shapes how people explain inequality, and that these explanations then map onto policy and partisanship. What are the main types of explanations that Americans use, and why do they push people toward such different conclusions?
I argue in the book that any person’s perspective on the American Dream reflects a bundle of specific beliefs about economic opportunity. Those who doubt the reality of the American Dream believe ordinary people face structural barriers to success. This would include things like living in an area where there are not many good jobs available or being the victim of discrimination. These skeptics just don’t buy the idea that low-income people and groups are working less hard than others.
Those who are optimistic that the nation delivers on its promise of widespread economic opportunity deny that structural barriers exist, and simultaneously insist that a person’s work ethic explains success or lack thereof.
These different perspectives connect to policy preferences in a straightforward way. If people are falling behind due to no fault of their own, then the nation has a moral obligation to assist. If we can identify structural barriers, then we know what to dismantle. On the other hand, if people are personally responsible for falling behind, there is not much the government can or should do. In fact, if we try to equalize economic outcomes under these conditions, we are making the nation less meritocratic, not more.
Why have Democrats and Republicans come to different views of the American dream and different explanations for inequality?
The evidence is clear that Democrats and Republicans today view the “reality” of the American Dream very differently. Overall, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say that upward mobility is widely available, in the process blaming those who have fallen behind for their economic struggles. Why this partisan disagreement exists is less clear.
I argue that there are two key reasons for the party divide. First, since its founding, the Republican Party has tended to represent the economic “haves,” and the Democratic Party the “have nots.” We are living through an unusual moment of class de-polarization, but influential entities within each party still reflect that longstanding class division – with ultra-wealthy donors on the Republican side and a phalanx of equity-oriented interest groups on the Democratic side. In short, the parties’ current economic agendas and accompanying rhetoric reflect ideological traditions that are bolstered by powerful actors within the parties. So, this explains the views of our party leaders.
Second, as for members of the public, they come to identify with a political party for a wide range of reasons, often having little to do with economics. For example, the most important influence on which party we align with is simply which party our parents prefer. Others may be drawn to a party due to its stance on social issues, such as abortion or immigration. But, whatever the reason for initially joining a party, research shows that the party’s perspectives on a wide range of topics eventually become our own.
People’s access to the American Dream has also been influenced by their race, gender, class, and other factors. How do those experiences interact with partisan cues? How much is someone’s view of the American Dream about their economic location as opposed to their partisan team?
Sociologists have pointed out that the people who are most optimistic about the availability of economic opportunity in the U.S. are exactly those who earn the most – White Americans, men, and those with high incomes. Black and Latino Americans, women, and low-income people tend to be more pessimistic.
Those who are doing well perceive a fairer economy for a number of reasons, including less knowledge of structural barriers as well as the psychic boost they get from believing their success is deserved. To some degree, these demographic and economic differences will drive people to choose one party over the other. Yet, my data suggest that politics are more important than demographics, including income. The partisan divide over the American Dream persists even after controlling for demographic characteristics, and the partisan divide is also much larger than demographic divides.
Are there exceptions to this pattern of party polarization? You talk about inequalities that are less “scripted” by politics.
The two parties have, on average, very different beliefs about the reasons for class inequality as well as for lower incomes among Black and Latino Americans and women. These are the inequalities that have dominated our political debates for over half a century, and the contours of these debates are heavily scripted.
But these are not the only inequalities in our society. In the book, I look at two other types of inequality. People living in rural areas earn considerably less than those living in urban areas, even taking into account the cost of living. Asian Americans earn on average more than White Americans. When considering these two very different kinds of inequality, partisans back away from their standard explanations for inequality: Democrats back away from structural explanations, and Republicans back away from individual blame. This suggests that the partisan divide over the American Dream does not extend to every inequality under the sun, and perhaps it is not intractable.
As shown by the extensive discussion about “affordability,” politicians are going to talk about economic discontent and mobility. Is there a more constructive way to “debate the American dream”? Is there a way that might be less polarizing or less zero-sum?
Yes, I think so. Both parties present stylized narratives about the economy that are at least somewhat divorced from reality. In our deeply polarized times, extreme voices within both parties push those narratives further apart.
With that in mind, I support reform efforts within both parties to, in effect, make party agendas and associated economic messaging more representative of the party coalition. These efforts will not be perfectly parallel. The Republican Party’s economic agenda and its traditional messaging around opportunity are more out of step with its base than the Democratic Party’s. Democrats face the challenge of regaining working class voters, many of whom have fallen away from the party because they perceive it as prioritizing the interests of educated elites.Interestingly, both reform efforts point in the same economic direction: policy reforms pitched broadly at working- and middle-class Americans. A focus on affordability certainly fits the bill. Shifting to the politics of affordability also may allow politicians to sidestep the tricky debate over deservingness that I have described. While talking about affordability is not so different from talking about incomes – prices are “high” only in relation to how much we earn – everyone encounters high prices, and the supply-side and regulatory tools for tackling high prices are more likely to be acceptable to leaders in both parties. Some efforts along these lines are already under way. For example, the U.S. House of Representatives just passed the Housing for the 21st Century Act by an overwhelming margin. This bill would decrease housing prices in part by reducing regulatory burdens – making it easier, and less expensive, to build homes. It’s not a bad start.
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