Been down so long

A book review in the New York Times started off with a discussion of how discontented people are today.  It cited a Gallup question on "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" Answers to this question don't actually show a clear trend since it started in the late 1970s.   But maybe the comparison shouldn't be now vs. a few years ago, but the 1970s and after vs. the 1960s and before?  In fact, the book in question refers to " America’s Fifty-Year Fail " in its subtitle, and the 1970s was a turning point in terms of economics--from a long decline in economic inequality to a long rise.

Public opinion surveys were not as common before the 1970s as they are today, so it's hard to address the possibility that there was a lasting drop after the 1960s.  In 1952, Gallup asked "As you look to the future, do you think life for people generally will get better, or will it get worse?"  That question was repeated in 1962, 1979, 1989, and 2009.  As discussed in this post, answers don't show a decline in optimism.  However, the 2009 survey was taken in January, and there might have been a short-lived spell of optimism accompanying the inauguration of Barack Obama.  Unfortunately, that question has not been repeated since 2009, so I looked for other possibilities.

In 1964, a special survey by the Gallup poll asked "Here is a ladder symbolic of the 'ladder of life'. Let's suppose the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you, and the bottom represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?" and this has been repeated a number of times since then.  The means:

The last three times the question was asked were 2009, 2011, and 2014.  The mean was low in 2009 and 2011, but much higher in 2014.  That suggests that assessments might respond to economic conditions and in fact the mean has a substantial correlation (-0.73) with the unemployment rate.  There is no apparent trend or lasting one-time drop.

I've had several posts (e. g., this one) arguing that people are not all that discontented with general economic and social conditions--they are discontented with politics.  I think these figures give further support for that position.  In fact, you might wonder why people haven't become more discontented, given the slow growth (some would say absence of growth) in average family incomes over the last 40 or 50 years.  I would say that it's because people mostly compare themselves to people around them and to their own past--whether they are better off than they were and are keeping up with other people they know.  Whether average income growth was faster for your parents' generation, or whether rich people are getting bigger gains, are too remote to have much impact on how people rate their own lives.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]