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Why America is deeply, uniformly unhappy [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2026-04-28  

The happiness crash that started in 2020 didn't spare any particular group. University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman analyzed self-reported happiness data and found the decline cut 10 to 15 percentage points across every demographic he examined — every age group, every income level, every ideology, every gender. Rich and poor fell equally, according to Derek Thompson at derekthompson.org.

Peltzman's 2026 paper uses the phrase "regime change in national sentiment" for what happened after COVID, adding that the U.S. "was a reasonably happy country for a long time. It is not happy now."

University of Michigan consumer sentiment sank to levels not seen in 70 years of surveys, below the Great Recession and the stagflation of the 1970s. The Federal Reserve's worker satisfaction measure hit its worst since tracking began in 2014. The World Happiness Report ranked the U.S. at its lowest position ever.

Thompson's top explanation is economic compression. Consumer prices rose 25% between 2020 and 2025 — the same amount they climbed in the entire preceding 13 years (2007 to 2020). Home prices rose 50% over five years, matching the total increase from 2004 to 2020.

Peltzman's data suggest the crash was sharpest in Anglophone countries; Quebec's French speakers declined by about half as much as English-speaking Canadians over the same period, which points to something in the media and information environment, not just the economics.

Thompson's unified theory: "permanent unrelenting economic crisis, amplified by a uniquely negative news and media environment, and exacerbated by the rise of solitude and the declining centrality of trusted institutions."

Previously:

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