Gallup and The Rippel Foundation Report Finds U.S. Well-Being Rates Near Historic Lows, But Local Communities Are Charting A Path Forward

Thriving fell to 48.1% and hope hit its lowest level since Gallup began tracking it in 2008, but communities using well-being data to guide local action are showing what it takes to change the trajectory.

Gallup and The Rippel Foundation today released Thriving Together in America: Trends, Discoveries, Community Action, and Advice for Leaders, a new report that draws on Gallup's national well-being data with insights from community practitioners working to reverse the decline. The research finds that American well-being has fallen to near historic lows, while hope — Americans’ confidence that their future will be better — has reached its lowest point since Gallup began tracking it in 2008. The report also finds this decline is not inevitable: communities across the country are already using well-being data to understand local conditions, bring residents and leaders together around shared challenges, and change the trajectory.

America’s Well-Being Is Declining, and Hope Is Falling With It

The share of U.S. adults classified as thriving fell to 48.1% in the third quarter of 2026, down more than 10 percentage points from its 2021 peak and approaching historically low levels. Hope — measured through Americans' expectations for their future lives — fell to 59.4%, essentially unchanged from the all-time low of 59.2% measured in 2025.

The decline is not experienced equally. Young adults ages 18 to 29 have seen the steepest deterioration in thriving, falling from the highest-thriving age group in 2010 (64%) to the lowest in 2026 (44%) — a 20-percentage-point drop. Thriving levels have also converged across Black, Hispanic, White, and Asian American adults, but that convergence reflects declining well-being across every group, not broad-based improvement. Place matters just as much as demographics: some U.S. counties approach 70% thriving while others sit near or below 40%, showing how much national averages can obscure the conditions shaping people's lives.

"The report's data confirm what we already know: division, othering, and turning away from each other are bad for our well-being. The steep declines are a clarion call, but in no way a verdict on our future. We can reverse these trends, and across the country communities are already showing how: working together to understand the factors shaping their lives and choosing to prioritize and invest in the vital conditions that enable thriving. The question before us is not whether we can change the trajectory, but whether we will act with courage, take hope in the examples of the communities in this report, and put those lessons into practice," said Becky Payne, President and CEO of The Rippel Foundation.

Communities Already Charting a Different Course

Across the 14 communities featured in the report, leaders and residents are using wellbeing measurement not simply to document challenges, but to better understand local conditions, identify priorities, inform decisions and shape action.

The communities represent different geographies, populations and local contexts, but their experiences point to a shared lesson: data can be most useful when communities have the opportunity to interpret it alongside resident knowledge and use it to inform decisions over time.

The report highlights numerous examples of this lesson in action: for example, in Greater Cincinnati, Ohio, the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center partnered with Gallup to build one of the country’s most comprehensive measurement systems for regional well-being, which now informs decisions to improve policies related to food security, youth well-being, and juvenile justice.

“Community measurement isn't just about tracking a number; it's about giving leaders and residents a shared, more granular perspective of their own conditions,” said Dan Witters, Research Director of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index at Gallup. “That's what lets communities move past a general sense that things are worsening and instead get specific, practical data about where to focus their efforts, which is exactly what we're seeing in the communities featured here.”

“Wellbeing data can be both a mirror on the past and a map toward a better future. The report shows how people looking for better ways to thrive together could make great strides by organizing around well-being in communities across the country,” said Bobby Milstein, Director of System Strategy at The Rippel Foundation.

Creating the Conditions to Thrive

The report frames thriving as a function of four drivers:

• Strengthening belonging and civic muscle by providing opportunities for people to show up for each other and their community strengthens their connections to place.
• Investing directly in vital conditions – tangible necessities like food, water, and humane housing, alongside harder-to-quantify conditions like belonging and connection.
• Promoting fairness in how systems are designed by looking honestly at those systems and redesigning them so opportunity isn't determined by who you are or where you started.
• Ensuring urgent and emergency services meet current needs but do not replace more durable measures that result in long-term thriving

Communities that align around these four drivers are already showing measurable gains. No single government office, nonprofit, funder, or institution can create these conditions alone. Sustained progress requires businesses, philanthropy, local government, health systems, community organizations, and residents to bring their own resources and expertise while coordinating around a shared understanding of what their communities need.

A Call to Measure, Learn and Act

The report calls on community leaders and institutions to start by measuring well-being locally and using what they learn to start a conversation—not simply to build a scorecard. Sustained improvement will not come from a single national program, but from communities learning from one another, acting on what they find, and coordinating across sectors.

The full report, Thriving Together in America: Trends, Discoveries, Community Action, and Advice for Leaders, is available here.

Methodology

Results are based on Gallup Panel surveys of randomly selected adults ages 18 and older living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The interim 2026 estimates are based on three quarterly surveys conducted in February, May, and August 2026 with 15,178 respondents. For results based on this sample, the margin of sampling error is approximately ±1.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, design effect included. Demographic weighting targets are based on the most recent Current Population Survey figures for the U.S. adult population. Full methodological detail is available in the report.

About The Rippel Foundation

The Rippel Foundation is pursuing an ambitious vision for health and well-being: a future where all people thrive together, with no exceptions. We join with partners who believe in the power of shared stewardship—people, organizations, networks, and communities coming together to reimagine our systems and work toward that thriving future. www.rippel.org

About Gallup

Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 85 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students, and citizens than any other organization in the world.

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