seem to be directly affected by what takes place on the national scene.

We noted earlier that people tend to be much more pessimistic about the nation and its future than they are about their own lives and fortunes. Since the mid-1960s, that pessimism has become more marked. There has been an erosion of public trust in government and a growing sense of the wastefulness of government. Perhaps no single indicator is so revealing as the evaluations of the condition of our nation as a whole: For some years, when asked whether they thought that next year would be better or worse than the year before for the nation, a considerable majority agreed that it would be better. However, over the past few years, several polls have noted a reversal in attitudes. Today, considerably more people think that next year will be worse for the nation than last year was, a perception that is held throughout the population. (See Figure 1.)

Public pessimism about national prospects for the future is by no means limited to the United States. Gallup polls taken late in 1979 in 10 nations suggest that this is a pervasive feeling. Although the greatest loss of optimism, especially about national economic prospects, was registered in the United States, feelings of growing pessimism characterized a majority of those nations.""

Perhaps most significant in looking ahead to the quality of life in the 1980s is that over recent years there seems to be a growing sense that those more general conditions are beginning to affect the immediate spheres of personal life. There is also a greater sense of foreboding, not only about personal finance, but also about such matters as the quality of family life and the availability of affordable housing. Although most people are still more optimistic about their personal lives than they are about the nation as a whole, that sense of optimism about one's personal future has eroded considerably in recent years. Polls, such as a recent Gallup survey that asks people whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the future facing them and their family, show a dramatic reversal of outlook. (See Figure 2.)

What appears to have happened, then, is a pervasive change in the nation's mood: Not only is the nation as a whole perceived to be in deteriorating condition, there has also been a dramatic shift toward greater dissatisfaction with one's personal prospects. This is indeed a dramatic reversal in outlook for a nation that until a few years ago was generally confident it was on the upward path toward the affluent society. What is most remarkable is that it is a pessimism that is largely prospective: there has been no real decline in the circumstances of most Americans that would provide the grounds for such a reversal of attitude.

39

Figure 1

Percentage of Americans Who Think "Next Year" Will Be Better or Worse

Question: As far as you're concerned, do you expect next year (named year) will be better or worse than (named previous year)?

Figure 2

Percentage of Americans Who Are Satisfied or Dissatisfied with the Future Facing Them and Their Families

Question: On the whole, would you say you are satisfied or

dissatisfied with the future facing you and your family?

Thus, the public mood as we conduct our analysis of the quality of American life in the 1980s is remarkably different from what it was 20 years ago when the last Presidential goals commission produced a volume entitled Goals for Americans. Then, there was far more optimism about the prospects of sustaining rapid economic growth, and a certain boldness about how, by expanding the government's role, America might become a society in which more people could enjoy a greater sense of wellbeing.

In that era when there was little sense of the limits of what government might accomplish, the consistent emphasis of the commission was to ask what else might be done, how the public sector might expand to offer the amenities that a wealthy society could afford.

Given the new realities of recent years and the changed national mood, our approach is a different one. In Part II of this report, we focus on three broad developments that may detract from a sense of well-being for millions of Americans in the 1980s. With regard to each topic, there are, we believe, certain basic questions that the nation's leaders must address, and certain changes in our attitudes as well as our institutions that would allow us to face new realities more realistically and constructively.

1. Wildavsky, Aaron, "Government and the People," Commentary (August 1979), pp. 25-32.

2. Survey by Gallup Organization, 1978.

3. Campbell, Angus, The Sense of Well-Being in America: Recent Patterns and Trends (New York: McGraw-Hill Co., 1981), Ch. 4.

4. Ibid, Chs. 2 and 4; Survey by Gallup Organization, 1978.

5. Office of the Surgeon General of the United States, personal communication, December 1980; information to be published in Health: The United States 1980 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Health Statistics, March 1981).

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Dr. Julius Richmond, quoted in The New York Times, December 5, 1980, p. 1.

9. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Social Indicators III (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1980), Ch. 2; Campbell, Supra n. 3, Ch. 13.

10. Social Indicators III, supra n. 9, Ch. 3; Campbell, supra n. 3, Ch. 3. 11. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of

Policy Development and Research, How Well Are We Housed? Vol. 1 (1980), Vol. 2 (1979), and Vol. 3 (1980) (Washington, D.C.: GPO). 12. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, "Household and Family Characteristics: March 1978," Current Population Reports, Series P-20, No. 340, July 1979; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, "Financial Characteristics of the Housing Inventory for the United States and Regions: 1977," Series H-150-77, August 1979; Article, Wall Street Journal (July 27, 1978). 13. Survey by The California Fair Housing for Children Project, 1979. 14. Social Indicators III, supra n. 9, Ch. 5; Survey by National Opinion Research Corporation, 1977.

15. Social Indicators III, supra n. 9, Ch. 5.

16. Robinson, John P., "Toward a Post-Industrious Society," Public Opinion (August/September 1979), pp. 41-46.

17. Ibid, p. 42.

18. Ibid, p. 43.

References

19. Ibid, p. 44.

20. Social Indicators III, supra n. 9, Ch. 11.

21. National Committee for Cultural Resources, Americans and the Arts 1975 (New York: ACA Publications, 1975), p. 7.

22. Ibid, pp. 9-10.

23. National Endowment for the Arts, Annual Report 1979 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1980).

24. The Report of the Commission on the Humanities, The Humanities in American Life (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1980).

25. Cable Television Information Center, Washington, D.C., personal communication, 1980.

26. Mahony, Sheila, Nick DeMartino, and Robert Stengel, Keeping PACE With the New Television: Public Television and Changing Technology (New York: The Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1980).

27. Ibid, p. 9.

28. Social Indicators III, supra n. 9, Ch. 6.

29. National Center for Education Statistics, Projections of Education Statistics (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1978).

30. Report of the Advisory Panel on the Scholastic Aptitude Test Score Decline, On Further Examination (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1977), p. 22.

31. Children's Defense Fund, America's Children and Their Families: Basic Facts (Washington, D.C.: Children's Defense Fund, 1979), pp. 8-9.

32. Ibid.

43