Is the American Dream still achievable in 2011, amid lingering economic hard times, wars and political discord? Veteran US pollster John Zogby says fewer Americans think it is, but many have redefined what that dream means.
Steadily over the past decade, I have witnessed in my polling a fundamental redefinition of the American Dream, even for that matter, the American character.
While fewer Americans believe that the American Dream still exists for themselves or for the middle class than before (57% compared with 74% just prior to the Great Recession), more Americans say that the American Dream means something different to them than it did before.
Materialism rejected
In the late 1990s, I began probing how Americans define the dream. I discovered in 1999 that about one-third believed the American Dream meant some form of financial success: the acquisition of goods, a bigger house, a home with a piece of land around it and so on. I called them the Traditional Materialists.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12839437
Note: Update Record,29 March 2011 Last updated at 11:29 GMT