HYDE PARK — A new poll from a University of Chicago-affiliated group finds that young Americans are rather down in the dumps about the nation.
The survey of people between the ages of 18 and 30 shows that only about one in five think America is "greater than it has ever been" or "equally great as it has been in the past."
Slightly more than half say it is "falling behind" and 24 percent said it is "failing."
Young whites were more pessimistic than their black and Hispanic counterparts, according to the GenForward survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
About 54 percent of all young people said "just a few at the top have a chance to get ahead" while 46 percent said "anyone can get ahead." Three in four say money and wealth should be more evenly distributed in the U.S.
One expert cited stagnant wages which "haven't grown for decades and have, in fact, decreased for lower-paid professions while increasing dramatically for those at the top."
For young people "their entire life span has been that of the average worker not having any wage increase," Matthew Monnot, an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco School of Management, told the Associated Press.
In terms of politics, the survey finds young African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans overwhelmingly prefer former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to businessman Donald Trump for president, while young whites are evenly split between the two.
An accompanying analysis of the poll concludes that "young adults across race and ethnicity report high levels of frustration with the political system." However, "young adults also agree that with some improvements, the two-party system could work well."
The authors say the dissatisfaction among young people was reflected in the success of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders whose "campaign focused heavily on the issue of income inequality."
"As the Sanders campaign frequently emphasized throughout their campaign, the distribution of wealth and income in America has become increasingly unequal over the past few decades. The rich are getting richer, while the incomes of the poor and middle class have been relatively stagnant. This has created a large and growing divide across socioeconomic class in America," the write.
The poll of 1,965 adults age 18 to 30 had a sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. It was funded by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
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