Historian James Truslow Adams coined the term “American Dream” during the Great Depression to describe the possibility of a better life available to anyone regardless of the circumstances of their birth. Adams made it clear that this dream was not supposed to revolve solely around wealth or material comfort. It refers to the ability to pursue fulfillment and opportunity through one’s own abilities and effort.
Even though the American Dream is centered on individual ambition, it still depends on the assumption that American society can realistically reward that ambition with stability and upward mobility.
In 2026, the American Dream still suggests that success is attainable for anyone, but the difference is that the Dream now asks individuals to overcome conditions that increasingly undermine stability itself. The promise that individuals can outwork systemic instability makes instability a personal responsibility. Americans are increasingly taught to interpret said instability as something that can be solved through greater discipline and adaptability, even as economic systems become more volatile and less predictable.
Earlier visions of the American Dream emerged during periods when stable employment, affordable housing and upward mobility appeared achievable for broad portions of the population. The Dream still required effort, though effort seemed connected to systems capable of rewarding it with continuity and security, and a stable life trajectory. People could reasonably expect that sustained education and long-term commitment to a career would gradually lead toward financial security.
Now, the relationship between effort and stability feels far less certain. Housing costs continue rising faster than wages in many areas. College degrees increasingly function as expensive prerequisites to the professional world.. Workers remain vulnerable to rapid technological shifts, unstable labor markets and industries demanding constant retraining. Stability itself feels temporary.
Rather than achieving upward mobility, many Americans increasingly rely on non-traditional forms of income and short-term work to maintain financial footing. This matters because upward mobility has always been central to the American Dream; when people are forced to focus on preventing decline, the Dream shifts from a promise of advancement into a struggle to preserve what they currently have.
Despite these increasingly unstable conditions, the dominant neoliberal cultural response rarely involves questioning the systems producing that instability. Instead, economic insecurity becomes a problem individuals are personally responsible for overcoming through continuous improvement. This response reflects the influence of neoliberalism, an ideological and economic framework that increasingly defines individuals according to their productivity, competitiveness and market value.
Political theorist Wendy Brown describes neoliberal culture as one that increasingly organizes citizens according to market logic. The self starts functioning like a permanent investment project requiring continuous improvement. Under neoliberalism, workers are expected to continuously adapt to changing economic demands, while students begin constructing employable identities years before entering the workforce. Economic pressure increasingly extends beyond the workplace itself, shaping how individuals understand success and even personal value.
The modern Dream therefore extends far beyond labor itself. Economic value increasingly shapes how Americans approach things such as education, as students are encouraged to view extracurricular activities through the lens of resume building. Even leisure becomes tied to productivity through side hustles and the pressure to transform interests into marketable skills. The Dream no longer operates solely as a promise about work as it extends to people evaluating their worth across multiple areas of life.
Furthermore, the modern American Dream suffers from a widening gap between promise and fulfillment. That gap helps explain why the emotional aspect of ambition has changed so dramatically. Earlier versions of the Dream pointed toward upward mobility, while the contemporary version increasingly revolves around avoiding decline. Americans continue chasing stability while simultaneously recognizing how fragile it has become.
This also changes how Americans understand failure. When the Dream teaches people that instability can be overcome primarily through personal effort, structural issues become moralized as individual shortcomings. The burden of surviving unstable systems is placed on individuals themselves, even when those systems remain fundamentally outside individual control.
The American Dream survives because Americans still want to believe that effort matters. Abandoning that belief would require confronting the possibility that hard work alone can no longer guarantee security in contemporary life. Yet the modern Dream increasingly asks individuals to compensate for structural instability. That is the central contradiction now shaping the American Dream.
Adams imagined a society where hard work could eventually produce a fuller life. The 2026 version of the Dream increasingly promises the possibility that individuals who work hard enough may be able to stay afloat within systems that no longer promise lasting stability.
Jacqueline Lee is an Opinion Intern for the spring 2026 quarter. She can be reached at jacquhl3@uci.edu.
Edited by Rebecca Do and Geneses Navarro
