“From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored, so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.”
The Coddling of the American Mind: by Jonathan Haidt and Gregory Lukianoff
Volunteering is often framed as an act of generosity — a gift of time offered to others in need. But what is less often acknowledged is how deeply it gives back to the giver. In a time marked by stress, isolation, and civic division, volunteering may be one of the most underutilized forms of medicine for the human soul. It restores purpose, fosters connection, and strengthens the fabric of our democracy.
At its core, volunteering reconnects us to something larger than ourselves. Modern life can feel transactional and fast-paced, leaving many detached from their communities. When we step into service—at a food pantry, a school, a shelter, or a neighborhood cleanup—we interrupt that detachment. We encounter people face to face, hear their stories, and engage with realities that might otherwise remain distant. This contact nurtures empathy, reminding us that behind every hardship is a person with dignity and worth.
Research increasingly confirms what many feel intuitively: helping others improves our own well- being. Acts of service are associated with reduced stress, improved mental health, and a stronger sense of life satisfaction. Yet beyond these measurable benefits lies something deeper — a renewed sense of meaning. Volunteering shifts us from passive observers to active participants in shaping a better world. It affirms that our presence matters.
This personal transformation has powerful civic implications. A healthy democracy depends not only on elections and institutions, but on the character and engagement of its citizens. Volunteering cultivates habits essential to democratic life: listening, cooperation, humility, and a willingness to work across differences. In shared service, political labels often fade, replaced by common purpose. A group serving meals or rebuilding homes is rarely divided by ideology; it is united by action.
Equally important, volunteering builds trust—an increasingly scarce resource in today’s civic climate. Trust does not emerge from rhetoric alone; it grows through shared experience. When people from diverse backgrounds collaborate to meet community needs, they begin to see one another as partners rather than adversaries. That shift can ripple outward, shaping how individuals engage in public life and civic dialogue.
Communities rich in volunteerism are often more resilient. They respond more effectively to crises, support their most vulnerable members, and foster a culture of shared responsibility. These qualities are essential to a thriving democracy. When people feel connected and invested in their communities, they are more likely to vote, participate in local governance, and advocate for the common good. Volunteering, then, is both deeply personal and profoundly civic. It is not political in a partisan sense, but it renews the civic spirit that democracy depends upon. It reminds us that democracy is not a spectator sport; it requires participation, care, and commitment.
If we are searching for ways to heal division, reduce loneliness, and strengthen our nation, we need not look far. The answer may be as simple—and as powerful—as showing up for one another. In giving our time, we restore not only our own sense of purpose, but also the compassion and connection that allow democracy to endure and thrive.
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Vincent Marzulloserved for 31 years as a federal civil rights/social justice director in Rhode Island with the Corporation for National & Community Service. Vin is a previous Chair of the RI Federal Executive Council which facilitated intergovernmental coordination and a former President of AARP RI. He has served three Rhode Island Governors, five Presidents, and is the Founder of USA Compassion Corps.
“What KidsMatter does is it actually introduces the notion that social and mental health wellbeing is important at the school level. It actually says to teachers and staf at schools … that … you can actually do it, and this is how you go about it. This is a model for you to be able to do this and you’ll be able to have some input into it and be able to participate. So KidsMatter, I think the importance of it, is changing the thinking of teachers – that they actually have a role to play in children’s social and emotional wellbeing ….Although they might not be a trained mental health professional, with the resources that KidsMatter provide, they are able to provide guidance as to where they may get that information.” (Counsellor School 9)
The KidsMatter Initiative KidsMatter (KM) is an Australian national primary school mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention initiative. KM was developed in collaboration with the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, beyondblue: the national depression initiative, the Australian Psychological Society, and Principals Australia, and was supported by the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund.
KidsMatter uses a whole-school approach. It provides schools with a framework, an implementation process, and key resources to develop and implement evidence-based mental health promotion, prevention and early intervention strategies. The KM framework consists of four key areas, designated as the KM components:
1. Positive school community 2. Social and Emotional Learning for students 3. Parenting support and education 4. Early intervention for students experiencing mental health diiculties.
KidsMatter aims to:
• improve the mental health and well-being of primary school students • reduce mental health diiculties amongst students • achieve greater support for students experiencing mental health diiculties.
KidsMatter impact overview “[KidsMatter] has changed school culture, I think. It’s changed the way the school views mental health. It’s given a greater awareness, but it’s also changed the way, I think, people relate to one another – particularly the students, and the way the classrooms operate.” (Principal School 9)
There were positive changes to schools, teachers, parents/caregivers 1 , and children associated with KM over the two year trial.
• There was evidence of change related to all four components of the KM framework. • KidsMatter was associated with statistically and practically signiicant 2 improvement in students’ measured mental health, in terms of both reduced mental health diiculties and increased mental health strengths. • The impact of KM was more apparent for students who were rated as having higher levels of mental health diiculties at the start of the trial. • There was substantial similarity in the indings for schools formally involved in KM for one year and for schools formally involved over two years. However, there were some measures that showed stronger efects in the schools involved in KM for two years.
Background to the KidsMatter Evaluation
A Pilot Phase of KM was trialled in 100 3 schools across Australia during 2007-2008. Fifty of the schools ran KM during the 2007 and 2008 school years. The remaining schools undertook KM during the 2008 school year. A consortium based in the Centre for Analysis of Educational Futures at Flinders University undertook an evaluation of the two-year trial.
The “First Rung” is Collapsing. Can National Service Rebuild It?
The U.S. labor market is at a critical turning point. As generative AI and automation rapidly reshape the economy, the traditional “entry-level” job—the essential first step for young professionals—is being systematically digitized and displaced.
A new white paper, released by a coalition including the EDSAFE AI Alliance, City Year, Partnership for Student Success, and Voices for National Service, argues that the solution isn’t to out-code the algorithms, but to invest in the uniquely human skills that AI cannot replicate.
Key Findings from the Report:
The Targeted Displacement of Youth: While the overall economy remains stable, youth unemployment reached 10.8% in 2025, and entry-level job postings have plummeted by 35% as AI automates rote cognitive tasks.
A Crisis of Access: This shift disproportionately impacts women—who occupy 79% of jobs at high risk of automation—and first-generation graduates who rely on entry-level roles to build professional networks.
The New “Durable” Skills: In an AI-driven world, the most valuable currency is human-centric: metacognition, dialogue, community building, and cross-functional teamwork.
AmeriCorps as a Workforce Engine: With a network of 2,000 organizations and a proven 17:1 return on investment, AmeriCorps is the nation’s ready-made infrastructure for training a resilient, human-centric workforce.
A Policy Roadmap for the Future
The paper outlines a comprehensive strategy to modernize national service for the 21st century, including:
Expanding the Segal Education Award to cover short-term industry certifications and AI-literacy training.
Integrating AmeriCorps into the federal workforce development system (WIOA) to create seamless pathways to employment.
Establishing a “National Service Credential” to help employers verify “soft skills” like leadership and grit.
Heavy social media use appears to be contributing to the drop in wellbeing among young people in English-speaking countries and Western Europe, especially among girls, according to findings published today (19 March) in World Happiness Report 2026.
Life evaluations among under 25s in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have dropped dramatically (by almost one point on a 0-10 scale) over the past decade, while the average for the young in the rest of the world has increased, according to Gallup World Poll data.
One international survey of 15-year-olds in nearly 50 countries suggests heavy social media use is associated, on average, with a significant drop in wellbeing among the students surveyed, though any effect is highly dependent on the type of social media platform being used, how it is used, as well as demographic factors such as gender and socio-economic status. Other factors, such as social connections and a sense of belonging, are associated with much bigger changes in how respondents feel about their lives.
Young people who use social media for less than one hour per day report the highest levels of wellbeing — higher than those who do not use social media at all. But adolescents are, by one estimate,1 spending an average of 2.5 hours a day on social media.
The findings are published today ahead of the UN’s International Day of Happiness. The rankings are powered by Gallup World Poll data and other sources, and are analyzed by an international team of leading experts in wellbeing science.
Contributors include the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, generational differences expert Jean Twenge, and Nudge co-author Cass Sunstein.
The evidence describes a complex global picture at a time when many countries2 are seeking to implement greater legislative protections for under-16s online.
Further key findings published in World Happiness Report 2026 include: ● The largest drops in wellbeing among young people are observed in English-speaking countries, in particular in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
● An association between social media and reduced wellbeing is found in multiple sources including surveys, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, and natural experiments …
● … but there is considerable variation in the interpretation of evidence by professional science organizations, including differences in citation accuracy, contextual detail, acknowledgement of limitations and conclusion strength.
● Platforms driven by algorithmically curated content tend to demonstrate a negative association with wellbeing, yet those designed to facilitate social connections show a clear positive association with happiness.
● Social media creates a standard collective action problem — if social media channels exist, people lose out by not joining, but most people agree they would be better off if they did not exist.
This 14th edition of the World Happiness Report also contains a ranking of the world’s happiest countries. Finland leads the world in happiness for a record ninth year in a row, with Finns reporting an average score of 7.764 (out of 10) when asked to evaluate their lives.
Costa Rica (4th) climbs to its best-ever position, continuing a multi-year rise from a low of 23rd in 2023, while former table-topper Switzerland (10th) re-enters the top 10 after a one-year absence.
Continued upward trends for countries such as Kosovo (16th), Slovenia (18th) and Czechia (20th) underline the convergence of happiness levels between Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe.
The 2026 rankings mark the first time since the World Happiness Report was first published in 2012 that none of the English-speaking countries, New Zealand (11th), Ireland (13th), Australia (15th), United States (23rd), Canada (25th) and the UK (29th) appear in the top 10, with only half in the top 20. Nations in or near zones of major conflict remain at the foot of the rankings.
Rankings are based on a three-year average of each population’s average assessment of their quality of life. Experts then seek to account for the variations across countries and over time using factors such as GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, a sense of freedom, generosity and perceptions of corruption.
These factors help to explain the differences across nations, while the rankings themselves are based solely on the answers people give when asked to rate their own lives.
John F. Helliwell, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia and a founding editor of the World Happiness Report, said: “When it comes to happiness, building what is good in life is more important than finding and fixing what is bad. Both need doing, now more than ever.”
The way people imagine the past and future of society can sway attitudes and behaviors. How might this be wielded for good?
We’re often told to “be here now.” Yet the mind is rarely tethered in place. We take mental trips to our past, revisiting what happened yesterday or when we were children, or we project into an imagined future: tomorrow’s dinner date, the trajectory of our career at age 50.
Rather than a diversion from the norm of mindful presence, this tendency to internally visit other time lines, called “mental time travel,” is common; young adults, for example, think about their future an average of 59 times a day. Psychologists have suggested that this ability to time travel from the confines of our own heads is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human.SUBSCRIBE
The past and future are not locations that remain the same regardless of who is visiting and when. The way we envision our past or future is ever-changing, and the construction of these scenarios has an impact on what we do and how we think in the present. Until recently, the study of mental time travel largely focused on individuals and their personal histories. But this doesn’t reflect the social nature of our lives. Identities are comprised of groups that nestle into one another. We are part of our families and friend circles, occupational networks, countries and nations, and ethnic groups. The study of mental time travel is starting to reflect this: When we travel through time, we don’t always go alone.
Research on “collective mental time travel” shows that the way we imagine the collective future or past also impacts the present. It can sway attitudes toward policy decisions and laws, as well as how aligned people feel with their country or existing systems. It can affect a person’s willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, like voting, donating, or activism. Because of this, collective mental time travel is more than just a neat cognitive trick—it provides an opportunity to be more intentional about how we represent the collective past and future.
In the 1980s, psychologist Endel Tulving proposed that humans have the ability to relive their past and pre-experience the future, theorizing that the same memory mechanisms were used for both. This was supported by case studies with amnesiacs: One man, “K.C.,” had brain lesions that affected his ability to retain personal memories, like a visit he’d taken to a family lake house. This patient couldn’t imagine going there in the future, despite knowing that his family owned the house.
More recent brain imaging has supported Tulving’s theory by showing that similar networks are activated when remembering the personal past and personal future, said Karl Szpunar, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Memory Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. Based on this evidence, some scientists think that we imagine the future by recombining past experiences—this is called the “constructed episodic simulation hypothesis.”
For the collective past and future, the story may be more complex. Is our collective future simply made up of fragments of the collective past? Intriguingly, when people with damage to their hippocampus, a brain region involved in personal memory, are asked about collective future events, like “What environmental concerns will the world face over the coming decade?” they are able to come up with answers. Even though their ability to mentally time travel into their personal futures was compromised, the ability to imagine events affecting a group’s future was intact. More work on this is needed, but as Spzunar and his colleague wrote, “The capacity to engage in collective future thought appears to rely on cognitive processes distinct from those involved in individual or personal future thinking.”Advertisement
The collective past likely has an influence on the collective future, but only to a point, says Meymune Topcu, a visiting scholar at The New School. She’s coauthor of a recent review chapter on collective mental time travel, in which she examined numerous cases of people collectively “visiting” the past and future and looked at whether they felt positively or negatively about their mental representations and how specific the content of their time travel was.
She found that past events can influence what people imagine to happen in the collective future, but there isn’t necessarily a complete overlap. Imagined collective futures can also be less specific than memories of the collective past, Topcu said. Additionally, when we think about our own futures, we tend to have an optimism bias, but when people are asked to think about the future of their countries, they often focus more on potentially worrisome, rather than potentially exciting, possibilities. (These findings have not been found to be culturally universal: Some newer research with Chinese participants has shown that such positive and negative biases are not present in those study groups.)
On an individual level, thinking about the future is correlated with specific actions or attitudes. Studies from Hal Hershfield, a psychologist at UCLA who studies the effects of time perception, and his colleagues, have found that people who relate more to their future selves make more future-oriented decisions, like saving money for later, and have higher levels of well-being over a 10-year period. Hershfield has also asked people about their conception of how long the present is. The longer they thought “right now” lasted, the fewer emotions they felt about the future. People who said that the present ended sooner were more likely to make future-oriented decisions. Having a future time perspective can alsopredict pro-environmental attitudes, like favoring and participating in more sustainable behaviors.
If how you think about the future or present can be a guiding influence, it’s a short leap to envisioning how collective pasts and futures might be manipulated for various means. Jeremy Yamashiro, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, said that rather than creating hard and fast rules for the best way to represent the past and the future, he’s become more sensitive to the ways people use representations in strategic ways. “It’s much more, ‘How are people using that in order to convince you of what they’re trying to convince you of?’” He said. The collective future probably isn’t based only on the building blocks of the past, but also cultural narratives, Yamashiro said.
Those narratives can have immediate and practical policy ramifications. In 2014, social and cultural psychologist Contance de Saint-Laurent analyzed the parliamentary debates on immigration in France and found two dominant narratives for how left-wing and right-wing politicians thought about the country’s past.
The left saw the past as “a constant struggle between humanists and their adversaries,” while the right saw the central tenet of French history as the “social contract that enables co-existence in society.” Because of the way these groups viewed the past, de Saint-Laurent wrote, people on the left were more willing to see the future as an opportunity to address colonial crimes, while the others would only accept immigrants who adhered to the social contract of the country.
A person’s current reality also affects how much they focus on the future. Johanna Peetz, a social psychologist at Carleton University, has found a link between future thinking and the economic index of countries and their general quality of life. If a country’s economic index was stable or decreasing, and quality of life was declining, people did not want to look toward the future.
We could, however, think of some manipulations being wielded for good. Topcu thinks that collective future thinking could play a role in addressing intergroup conflicts. In one study, people who lived in the European Union were given different descriptions of the EU. One was an excerpt that mentioned the common heritage of European societies, the other was a narrative focusing on how the EU was a project for the future. Then the people played a game in which they had to choose to cooperate with other participants. When people saw the EU as a future-oriented project, rather than one based in the past, they were more likely to play nice.
“I’m just speculating, but if we ask people to imagine a future in a different way, or simply imagining a future where there’s more peace and cooperation between these two groups, it could have an effect on whether they would be more willing to change the present situation,” Topcu said.
This approach could be applied at a more global scale. In 2018, researchers asked people to write about their vision of the best possible overall society. People who imagined utopia-like futures ended up being less satisfied with the status quo and were less likely to justify current systems. People asked to engage in utopian thinking also reported being more willing to participate in individual and collective action to attain that future.
But the type of utopia mattered. In a follow-up study, participants were asked to imagine either a “green utopia” composed of an “ecologically friendly society that champions sustainable efficiency” or a “sci-fi utopia,” where technological advancement and material efficiency dominated. Both utopias were seen as positive, but those who imagined the green utopia were more willing to participate in social change or report that they would donate to a nonprofit. The authors speculated that it had to do with agency—those who invested in a sci-fi future envisioned technology solving every problem and may have felt less able to bring about that positive future.
This suggests that proposing a future on Mars, for example, might unintentionally lead to less action in the present than collectively imagining a different kind of future would. “When we think about techno-fixes, it’s couched in a narrative of progress,” said Piotr Szpunar, a professor in the Communication Department at the University at Albany: “a narrative that technology continuously gets better, and at the same time, that society continuously gets better, or more equitable.” This can happen within nations too, as with the story of American exceptionalism. “There’s this idea that regardless of what happens, we’re still progressing,” he said. William Hirst, professor and cochair of psychology at The New School for Social Research, described the often rigid relationship between memory and history as “mnemonic inertia,” when certain stories become sticky and have outsized weight in terms of how we think about the present and future.
The future can also modify how we view the past, a concept that psychologist Ignacio Brescó de Luna called “prolepsis,” or when “imagined futures are brought into the present by means of particular ways of reconstructing the past.” In 2018, transdisciplinary scholar Séamus A. Power interviewed people engaged in water protests in Ireland. He argued that a driving reason for their collective action was imagining a dystopic future in which water was privatized, an imagined future based on remembering past cases of privatization in Ireland.
“There is a continuous looping from the past to the future and back again, always converging on the focal point of the present,” Power wrote. There’s room for flexibility—the most important lesson currently from collective mental time travel might be how dynamic an interaction there is between our notions of future, present, and past.
No matter how we use it, collective mental time travel ultimately challenges the objective reality of our past and present. The English philosopher C.D. Broad proposed the “growing block theory of time,” which says that only the past and present are real, and the future is not. As the future becomes the present, it is added on to the “growing block of reality.” Collective mental time travel reminds us that all remembrances of the past are reconstructions to some extent, and our present is continuously being informed by the way we imagine the future and conceive of the past.
“When you can change the narrative of the past, it’s going to change the way you conceive of the future too,” Hirst said. We won’t ever be able to escape this relationship, but we can seek a better understanding of how our perceptions are influenced by mental time travel, and how the collective past and future can be tools for building a better present.
Apocalypse fears, once associated with the fringes of society, are now commonplace across North America—and are shaping attitudes towards perceived threats.
New research has revealed just how widespread these beliefs have become, fuelled by climate change, geopolitical instability and rapid advancements in artificial intelligence.
“Belief in the end of the world is surprisingly common across North America, and it’s significantly influencing how people interpret and respond to the most pressing threats facing humanity,” said paper author and social psychologist Matthew I. Billet of the University of California, Irvine in a statement.
Drawing on a survey of more than 3,400 people across the U.S. and Canada, Billet and colleagues found that apocalyptic beliefs are far from rare.
In fact, in a U.S. national sample of 1,409 respondents, nearly one‑third said they believe the world will end within their lifetime.
This new data shows that people think about the end of the world in multiple ways, including when it could happen, what could cause it, and whether it should be feared or welcomed.
In the U.S., these beliefs were strongly linked to how people perceive and respond to global risks like climate change, pandemics, nuclear conflict and emerging technologies.
Science
To understand these perspectives, Billet and his colleagues developed a comprehensive psychological measure of end-of-world beliefs, identifying five key dimensions that matter for how people think and act.
These include perceived closeness (how soon the end will arrive); anthropogenic causality (whether humans will cause it); theogenic causality (whether divine or supernatural forces will cause it); personal control (how much influence one personally has over the outcome); and emotional valence (whether the end will ultimately be good or bad).
“Different narratives people believe about the end of the world can lead to very different responses to societal issues,” said Billet.
“Someone who believes humans are causing the apocalypse through climate change will respond very differently to environmental policy than someone who believes the end times are controlled by divine prophecy.”
The research also uncovered notable differences between religious groups. “Everyone agrees on one thing: We humans play an important role in the fate of our species,” said Billet.
“This was as true for the religious as it was for the non-religious. However, there were also differences between religious denominations that were quite stark. These differences point to how religion—and culture more broadly—can shape how we fundamentally view the world and our collective future.”
The most significant finding of the study may be how these beliefs shape action. Participants were asked about five categories of existential risk identified by the World Economic Forum: economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological.
Those who believed the end is near—and that it might be caused by humans—perceived higher levels of dangers and supported more extreme measures to the address global threats that humanity is facing.
On the other hand, those who believed divine forces control it, were less likely to support preventive action.
“These differences can create disagreements across cultural groups that make it difficult to coordinate responses to global risks, both within countries and between countries.
“Today, beliefs about accepting the Mark of the Beast from the Last Days undermine efforts at mass vaccination against COVID-19. The dread of climate apocalypse undermines young people’s motivation to tackle climate change and to bring children into this world.”
Instead of dismissing apocalyptic fears as irrational, Billett argues that understanding is essential.
“Whether or not any particular apocalyptic narrative is accurate, they are still consequential for how populations confront concrete risks,” he said.
“If we want to build consensus around addressing climate change, AI safety or pandemic preparedness, we need to understand how different communities are interpreting these threats through their own cultural lenses. In a world facing genuine catastrophic risks, that understanding has never been more important.”
Reference
Billet, M. I., White, C. J. M., Shariff, A., & Norenzayan, A. (2026). End of world beliefs are common, diverse, and predict how people perceive and respond to global risks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000519
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The percentage of U.S. adults who anticipate high-quality lives in five years declined to 59.2% in 2025, the lowest level since measurement began nearly two decades ago. 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. Most of that decline occurred between 2021 and 2023, but the ratings dropped 3.5 points between 2024 and 2025.
Americans’ ratings of their current lives have also declined since rebounding in 2021 but not as steeply as their future life ratings. And current life ratings are not at a low point; that occurred in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These results are a part of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. The 2025 results are based on data collected over four quarterly measurement periods, totaling 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.
To measure current as well as future life satisfaction, respondents were asked:
“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. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”
“On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now?”
Recent Declines in Future Life Ratings Greatest Among Democrats, Hispanic Adults
Black adults — historically the most likely of the United States’ three major race/ethnicity groups to have high future optimism — had the greatest erosion in optimism between 2021 and 2024. But Hispanic adults showed a larger drop than Black adults did in the past year.
All three major political identity groups dropped about five percentage points in future life optimism from 2021 to 2024. However, the groups showed differing patterns of change in 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second administration. Democrats tumbled another 7.6 points in 2025, while independents edged down another 1.5 points and Republicans remained essentially unchanged.
It is common for life ratings to swing negatively or positively among political partisans when party control of the White House changes. 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.
Overall Life Evaluation Closes Out 2025 Near Record Low
As of Quarter 4, 2025, the percentage of American adults who rate both their current and future lives high enough to be classified as “thriving” dropped to 48.0%, down over 11 points from the 59.2% high measured in June 2021, six months after the first public rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. The latest estimate is the sixth lowest of 176 (primarily monthly or quarterly) measurement periods dating to January 2008. The five measurements that were lower were during either the Great Recession (October, November and December 2008) or the early stages of the pandemic (in the first and the last half of April 2020).
For its Life Evaluation Index, Gallup classifies respondents as “thriving,” “struggling” or “suffering,” according to how they rate their current and future lives on a ladder scale with steps numbered from zero to 10, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. Those who rate their current life a 7 or higher and their anticipated life in five years an 8 or higher are classified as thriving. While, as noted above, both the current life and future life ratings have declined since 2021, the future life metric has had an outsized influence over eroding thriving rates because it has declined much more substantially. This contrasts significantly with 2020, when the thriving rate plunged below 50%, ultimately tying its all-time low of 46.4% — a result of a major drop in current life satisfaction amid a modest improvement in future life satisfaction, which culminated in a near-record high for the latter that year.
Implications
The drop in future life ratings since 2021 likely indicates that multiple mechanisms are at work. For example, the steep drop from 2021 to 2023 — even as the pandemic was gradually receding — closely coincides with annual inflation rates that peaked at 7.0% in 2021 and eased only slightly to 6.5% in 2022, creating significant affordability challenges for U.S. consumers that continue to this day.
During the four-year period from 2021 to 2024, the drop in optimism was greatest among Black adults, who disproportionately suffered the effects of inflation, with elevated levels of food, housing and healthcare insecurity compared with their White and Hispanic counterparts. But no differences were found among Democrats, Republicans and independents, suggesting that national challenges like a pandemic or inflation will have a similar negative influence on the optimism of Americans, regardless of political identity.
This dynamic changed in 2024 and 2025, with the pandemic over and inflation significantly lowered (albeit still elevated). During this period, the reduction in life optimism has been much greater among Hispanic adults. More generally, the sharp divergence of changes in future life ratings for Democrats compared with independents or Republicans in this latter period versus the former also suggests that the change in political administrations is a contributing factor, a mirror image of the changes that occurred between 2020 and 2021.
AmeriCorps HQ in downtown DC were celebrating AmeriCorps week with a special staff meeting for local and all national offices. Part of the meeting was a lunch time panel made up of AmeriCorps members from various programs. Two of Project CHANGE members, Sande Lee and Chiquita Battle, were invited to share about the impact AmeriCorps Project CHANGE is making on their lives and the lives of the kids they serve.
Sande and Chiquita, along with another Project CHANGE member Rose Darisme, are serving in a special project in different MCPS schools, Springbook High School, Einstein High School, Briggs Chaney Middle School, and others, teaching kids how to become more confident and socially and emotionally resilient. They are doing it in a unique and practical way. They teach kids how to grow their own food through Hydroponics and Urban farming.
The project attracts students because it is fun, and hands-on, and at the end of every month, the kids see the fruits of their husbandry with a local farmers market where the produce they have grown is shared with families who need it the most. Growing healthy food teaches kids about living healthy lives and cooperating together. The system requires some intense care and maintenance, to make sure the machines are clean and working, and the students learn the hard way that if they forget to care, the plants die, and no food is grown.
It is a win-win all the way, and only possible because of the dedication of members like Chiquita and Sande. Sande and her team have dreams of taking their project to every MCPS school and beyond.
Chiquita Battle Project CHANGE sharing her storySande Lee, Project CHANGE, the driver of the Hydroponics program briefing AmeriCorps staffSande Lee Project CHANGESande and the panel Chiquita answering questions Chiquita and the rest of the panelthe AmeriCorps panel at HQ for AmeriCorps week 2026The AmeriCorps staff listening to the stories of impact Some of the fruits of the project – Anyone for salad?Sande Lee Project CHANGENo telling what you can grow Anyone for Salad?Chiquita Battle, Project CHANGE
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