Gen Z: How Will You Remake the American Dream?

Americans of all ages are increasingly skeptical of the American dream. As a new crop of shiny young people graduate from high school, college and professional schools this month, we wanted to ask: What might a new vision for the future look like?

The old version of the dream seems increasingly irrelevant for people in their teens and 20s. Sociologists call it the success sequence: graduate from college, get a job, get married, have children, in that order. Buying a house for those kids to run around in is supposed to be the capstone.

But with untenable costs locking many out of the housing market and parts of the country becoming uninsurable because of potential climate damage, homeownership is no longer a top goal for everyone.

Because finding the right job can prove difficult and many entry-level jobs could be vulnerable to artificial intelligence, some Americans in their 20s and 30s sought the solace of steady, unglamorous government work … until this year, when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency took a wrecking ball to federal jobs. It’s not just the federal work force that’s in disarray; our entire democracy seems more precarious than it’s been in a long time.

More people are questioning the value of higher education than in recent memory, with only a quarter of Americans saying that college is extremely or very important. Nearly 50 percent of Americans “say it’s less important today than it was in the past for someone to have a four-year degree in order to get a well-paying job,” according to Pew Research.

“Gen Z on Marriage: In This Economy?” read a headline in The Wall Street Journal last year, and it could also act as a mission statement for people in their 20s, who are either putting off or forgoing marriage and babies entirely.