The number of U.S. adults who believe their lives are thriving has fallen below 50% for the second straight quarter, according to Gallup data released Thursday, the first time since the early days of the pandemic in 2020 that less than half of respondents held such a negative view in consecutive time periods.
Gallup's Life Evaluation Index stood at 48.9% in the first quarter of this year, equaling the estimate from the fourth quarter of 2024. Gallup said it's the first time since March and April 2020 that the thriving rate has been below 50% for consecutive quarters.
For results based on the sample of national adults, the margin of error is +/- 1.6 percentage points for percentages around 50%. For reported subgroups based on political identity, the margin of error is about +/- 3 percentage points.
The most recent results were derived from an online survey conducted Feb. 18-26 of 5,876 U.S. adults as part of the Gallup Panel, a probability-based panel encompassing all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
For its Life Evaluation Index, Gallup said it classifies Americans as "thriving," "struggling" or "suffering" according to how they rate their current and future lives from zero to 10, based on the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale. Those who rate their life a 7 or higher and their anticipated life in five years an 8 or higher are classified as thriving.
Republicans have seen an increase of nearly 5 percentage points since the third quarter of 2024, when the rating was 50.7%. In the past two quarters, 55.3% and 55.5% of Republicans said their lives are thriving. Among Democrats, however, there has been a decrease of 11 percentage points, from 57.1% in the third quarter of 2024 to 46.1% in the latest index. Independents, who typically poll at below 50% thriving, according to Gallup, are down six-tenths of a percentage point since the third quarter of 2024, from 48.5% to 47.9%.
"Amid major declines in life ratings for Democrats since the 2024 election, the thriving rate has also proven to be a reliable predictor of regime change in U.S. presidential elections based on its historical average of 53.5% since the end of the Great Recession in June 2009," Gallup said.
The polling agency said the second half of Joe Biden's presidency was characterized by languishing thriving rates that boded poorly for his reelection chances, as well as those for Vice President Kamala Harris. Gallup said even though the continued dip into the first months of President Donald Trump's presidency "makes for an increasingly troubling trend in Americans' well-being, the thriving rate has shown itself capable of large swings in relatively short periods of time, as recently as 2020-2021 amid the pandemic.
"As such, the opportunity for significant improvement in U.S. well-being in the future remains intact," Gallup said.