How We Summarized the Results

  • Mixed: the trends go in strongly opposite directions during different periods.
  • Unclear: too few years of data to establish a trend.

Measures in green indicate an improving national trend or that we are outperforming at least 80% of countries.

Measures in red indicate a declining national trend or that we are outperforming less than 50% of countries.

Measures in yellow indicate stable trends or that we are outperforming 50-79% of countries.

The purpose of the State of the Nation Project is to provide an overall assessment of how the country is doing on a wide range of factors that we, and the American people, believe are important. Below is a summary of our report: 37 measures across 15 topics. We report each measure in two different ways (where possible): our national trend and the percentage of middle- and high-income countries we outperform (a higher number is always better). All of these measures were supported by a supermajority of the authors and the ones with p next to the measure name were also supported by a supermajority of the general public. In the Executive Summary and topic sections, we also discuss how our international ranking is changing over time and provide more discussion of the conclusions we draw from these data.

Conclusions

The various parts of the country do not operate in isolation. While we stop short of a full analysis that attempts to explain any individual finding or explain the findings’ complex interplay, we do highlight some key patterns and connections.

  • Conclusion #1

    We are a nation of extremes—extreme successes and extreme failures.

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    Conclusion #1

    We are a nation of extremes—extreme successes and extreme failures.

    We are near the top in the world, among high-income countries, on economic measures but near the bottom on measures related to mental health, citizenship and democracy, inequality, and violence, as well as for measures of greenhouse gas emissions and some children/family measures.

  • Conclusion #2

    Our national trends are improving in more areas than we are declining. However, relative to other countries, the opposite is true—we are declining in more areas than we are improving.

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    Conclusion #2

    Our national trends are improving in more areas than we are declining. However, relative to other countries, the opposite is true—we are declining in more areas than we are improving.

    Our national trends are generally improving on measures related to the economy, education, environment, physical health, and probably violence (five topics). Conversely, our national trends are generally declining for citizenship and democracy, life satisfaction, mental health, and trust (four topics).

    However, compared with other countries, we are also declining on the environment, physical health, and possibly civil liberties. This means that our international standing is declining on five topics and improving in only two (economy and education). In this respect, we are getting better overall, but more slowly than other countries.

    If, instead of focusing on the number of topics, we gave equal weight to each measure, then we would also be declining on considerably more measures than we are improving. This is true in both national and international trends. This is because there are a few topics—life satisfaction, mental health, and trust—where most measures are headed in the wrong direction.

  • Conclusion #3

    Our economy is poised for continued success.

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    Conclusion #3

    Our economy is poised for continued success.

    This is really the only area where we are excelling. We have had one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world for more than a century—and we show no signs of letting up. Our worker productivity remains high. Also, our education levels have been generally improving relative to competitors, which, along with our culture of innovation and entrepreneurialism, should allow us to maintain our high productivity in the future.

    Finally, despite the slight decline in labor force participation, our workforce continues to grow slightly because of a gradually rising population. However, the population is only rising because of immigration, so upcoming policy decisions in this area will be important to our economic future, as well as national security.

  • Conclusion #4

    Our rising incomes are not translating into greater perceived well-being and social relations.

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    Conclusion #4

    Our rising incomes are not translating into greater perceived well-being and social relations.

    Our measures of perceived well-being, especially in life satisfaction and mental health, are all going in the wrong direction, even as our material well-being continues to rise. Research has generally suggested that “money buys happiness,” at least to some degree, but our trends on these measures are moving in opposite directions. We also see declines in our relationships with others, including social isolation and half of the trust measures. Given the importance of social relationships in our lives, these two trends are probably related.

    One possible general explanation is that rising income is still improving our perceived well-being, but other factors are acting more powerfully to offset this and make us feel worse off. Another possibility is that the way in which we are pursuing material wealth is directly reducing psychological and social well-being. We encourage future investigation about the possible explanations.