The Structural-Demographic State of America VI

The Newest Data on Well-Being/Immiseration

Last year, I reviewed the data on well-being proxies as part of my series on the American structural-demographic variables. The goal of updating time-series data to 2025 was to see whether there were any hints of a trend-reversal presaging the beginning of exit from crisis. My conclusion was not very optimistic:

Overall, empirical trends that we’ve reviewed here don’t offer much basis for optimism. The negative trends in various proxies that had developed prior to 2015 have generally continued in the subsequent decade.

I can now update this analysis with the most recent data, which has just been released by The State of the Nation Project, which collects an unusually broad spectrum of indicators on the well-being of Americans. Let’s see what these data say.