A new UCI-OC Poll finds Orange County residents deeply divided over whether the American Dream is still within reach, with housing costs reshaping how younger generations define success, family and financial security.
A new UC Irvine survey found that Orange County residents are divided over whether the American Dream is still attainable in the county. But the most revealing finding isn’t whether people believe in it, but how each generation defines it differently — a redefinition that, according to national data, resonates particularly strongly among the Latino community.
Nine out of 10 Orange County residents — Republicans and Democrats, renters and homeowners, wealthy and working-class residents — agree on one thing: buying a home today is harder than it was for their parents. According to the latest UCI-OC Poll, released this week by UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology, that’s only the beginning of the problem.
The survey, conducted among 809 Orange County adults from June 9 to 12, found residents almost evenly divided over whether the American Dream is still attainable in the county: 45% say it is, while another 45% say it once was but no longer is.
“What’s striking here is that residents haven’t given up on the American Dream itself,” said Jon Gould, dean of the School of Social Ecology and director of the survey. “What they’re questioning is whether Orange County can still be the place where that dream becomes reality.”
The figure is even more striking in comparison: a 2024 national survey found that 53% of Americans still considered the American Dream attainable — suggesting that Orange County residents are more pessimistic than the country as a whole, despite living in one of the wealthiest regions of the United States.
Not Everyone Dreams the Same Dream
Part of the complexity, the survey suggests, is that residents themselves disagree on what the American Dream actually means:
28% define it as financial security and stability.
22% describe it as owning a home and raising a family.
22% associate it with personal freedom and independence.
And this is where the study’s most revealing generational divide emerges:
At 38%, Generation Z residents are far more likely than any other age group to define the American Dream in terms of personal freedom and independence — compared with just 11% who associate it with homeownership and family.
Millennials and Generation X, by contrast, define the dream more often in the traditional way: homeownership and family, at 30% and 32%, respectively.
Baby boomers prioritize financial security above all else.
“These generational differences tell us something important,” Gould said. “Younger residents may be redefining the dream precisely because the traditional version — the home, the family, the stable career — feels out of reach.”
The Ground Has Become Harder for Everyone
Regardless of how they define it, residents broadly agree that achieving the dream has become more difficult:
Nearly seven in 10 (69%) say hard work alone is no longer enough to buy a home and raise a family.
Ninety-three percent say buying a home is harder now than it used to be; 79% say the same about raising a family; and 70% about finding a good job.
Major life decisions are taking the hit directly: 57% of residents say the county’s cost of living has led them to postpone or scale back at least one major decision — buying a home, getting married, having children, or changing careers — and more than a third say they have postponed multiple life milestones at once. Among millennials, the figure rises to 76%, compared with just 36% of boomers.
What Latinos Are Saying, Nationally
The UCI survey did not break down its results by race or ethnicity, so we don’t know precisely how Orange County’s Latino community — which represents a significant share of the county’s population — responded to this question. But a national Axios-Ipsos survey conducted in partnership with Noticias Telemundo offers a relevant clue as to how Latinos in the United States, more broadly, are processing this same tension.
That survey found that a majority of U.S. Latinos — 61% — believe they can still “live the American Dream,” even after years marked by the pandemic and economic inequality. More than 90% said that hard work and English proficiency are the most important factors for achieving success.
But that optimism is not uniform: 58% of Mexican Americans — the largest Latino group in the country — said they believe they can still achieve the American Dream, compared with 72% of Cuban Americans. According to analysts, the difference reflects both immigration history and political affiliation, as Cuban Americans tend to lean more toward the Republican Party.
Whether that national optimism holds among Latinos in Orange County — where the community is simultaneously facing housing pressures, growing food insecurity, and the economic impact of immigration enforcement operations that we have documented in previous reports — remains an open question that the UCI survey, as published, does not answer.
A Complicated Loyalty
Despite their concerns, Orange County residents have not given up on the county. When asked whether they would encourage a young adult to build their future there, 67% said yes — although nearly half would do so with reservations about costs and opportunities. Only 19% would recommend it without reservations. At the same time, more residents believe the county’s best years are behind it (45%) than believe they are still ahead (32%).
“It’s a kind of complicated loyalty,” Gould said. “People love this place, want to stay, and want the next generation to have what they had. But they also have their eyes wide open to the fact that it’s getting harder and harder.”
