Public opinion trends in American society: Lessons from social science infrastructure

How have individual and national welfare evolved over time in the United States? We use long-standing National Science Foundation-supported surveys-the American National Election Studies and the General Social Survey-to address this question. Our selected examples suggest measures of individual welfare (economic, health, happiness) have remained relatively stable, although with some recent acute declines (e.g. since 2020). More dramatically, beliefs about national welfare such as satisfaction with how democracy works, affective polarization, political efficacy, and confidence in various institutions have moved in negative directions over decades. These trends paint a picture of a stressed nation. They additionally highlight how descriptive survey data can be used to understand and raise questions about American society. Public opinion trends play a vital role in the social scientific process and these data are only available due to generational investments in gold-standard time series survey data.