Poll: Young expect hardship, happiness

WASHINGTON – For young people who came of age in the recession, the American dream of life getting better for each new generation feels like a myth.

A majority expect to have a harder time buying a house and saving for retirement than their parents did. More than 4 in 10 predict it will be tougher to raise a family and afford the lifestyle they want, according to an Associated Press-Viacom poll of Americans ages 18 to 24.

Only about a fourth expect things to be easier for them than the previous generation – a cherished goal of many hardworking parents.

“I just don’t really see myself being able to obtain the kind of money my parents could when they were my age,” said Mark McNally, 23, who earned a history degree from the University of Minnesota a year ago and now works part time in a liquor store.

San Francisco State University nursing student Ashley Yates is confident she’ll build a career in health care but expects money to be tighter in her lifetime. “Social Security may not even exist when I’m older,” said Yates, 23. “Health insurance is going up. Everything just costs more.”

Yet despite financial disappointments, young adults overwhelmingly say they’re happy with their lives, much more so than older folks in similar surveys.

Youthful optimism – with perhaps a touch of naivete – lives on. A whopping 90 percent expect to find careers that will bring them happiness, if not wealth.

Linka Preus, who’s taking a year off her career track to work in an Ithaca, N.Y., bagel bakery, figures every generation has its own struggles, and bad economies eventually improve.

“Even if it never gets better permanently, we’ll adjust to whatever it is,” said Preus, 22, a linguistics and cognitive science grad from Cornell University who plans to pursue her passion for science in graduate school.

High unemployment has left lots of young lives in limbo. Among students who don’t plan to go to work right after college, three-fourths say the limited number of open jobs in their field was important to their decision. Riding out the tough times in grad school is a popular choice for those with the means.

But for some without such options, optimism is hard to muster.

Nathan Watkins, out of work in rural Epworth, Ga., has little job experience, no car and no access to public transportation.

“I’m literally stuck and there’s nothing I can do about it. At least I feel that way,” said Watkins, 23, a high school graduate who lives with his mother and tries to compensate her by doing chores.

He’s seeking work of any type. “Honestly, at this point, I wouldn’t care. In this economy, you take what you can get.”

Young people today are more pessimistic about their economic futures than young adults in a similar poll in April 2007, eight months before the recession began. And most say they cannot afford the things they want or are struggling at least a little to make their money last through each week. About half are dependent on family members for financial support.

The AP-Viacom telephone survey of 1,104 adults ages 18-24 was conducted Feb. 18-March 6 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Stanford University’s participation in this project was made possible by a grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.