The U.S. was once considered the global standard-bearer for personal liberty, Americans are now suffering a quiet crisis of confidence in their own freedoms.
For the third consecutive year, Americans report lower satisfaction with their personal freedom than the global average—including, most strikingly, compared to their peers in other wealthy, market-based democracies. It is a decline that says as much about the mood of the nation as it does about its political turbulence and cultural fragmentation.
In 2024, just 72 per cent of Americans said they were satisfied with their freedom to choose what they do with their lives—a figure that has barely moved since 2022, when it fell off a cliff. Before that, between 2007 and 2021, the U.S. averaged a robust 83 per cent satisfaction rate, comfortably above the global median. Now, America trails behind a world that, paradoxically, is growing more confident in its own liberties.
A median of 81 per cent across 142 countries and territories reported being satisfied with their personal freedom in 2024, according to global survey data. Among OECD nations—those often grouped with the U.S. as liberal, market-oriented democracies—the median satisfaction figure is even higher, at 86 per cent.
This growing gap is not just numerical. It is symbolic. For a country whose national identity is practically defined by the idea of individual liberty, Americans are becoming less sure that they actually enjoy it.
A Decline Without Precedent
Only three other countries—Pakistan, Croatia, and North Macedonia—have seen drops in satisfaction with personal freedom on par with the U.S. between 2021 and 2024. Pakistan, wracked by political instability and military interference in civilian life, saw a dramatic 23-point plunge. Croatia fell 17 points. The U.S. declined nine points, the same as North Macedonia, a country hardly seen as a bellwether for Western liberalism.
The causes of America’s malaise are complex, but the trends point to a population that is both deeply divided and increasingly disillusioned with its governing institutions. And while the data precedes the election that returned Donald Trump to the presidency, the contrast between political moments past and present is instructive.
During the early months of Trump’s first term in 2017, there was a bump in satisfaction with personal freedom. But it was short-lived. By 2020, with the country convulsed by a pandemic, race protests, and a bitterly polarised election, satisfaction began to fade. It hasn’t recovered.
The Gender Divide
Perhaps the most revealing shift is among American women. In 2024, only 66 per cent of women said they were satisfied with their freedom to choose their own path in life, compared with 77 per cent of men. That 11-point gender gap is the largest ever recorded in the United States, and it is no coincidence that it opened abruptly in 2022—the year of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
Before the leak of the draft opinion in early May 2022, Gallup found men and women were equally satisfied with their freedom. But after the leak—and even more so following the Court’s official ruling in June—women’s satisfaction plummeted. In contrast, men’s responses remained stable.
The ruling appears to have triggered not just anger, but a wider sense among American women that their autonomy is under threat. The decline in satisfaction has been sharpest among women aged 15 to 59, a cohort whose lives are most directly impacted by reproductive rights and broader questions of bodily autonomy.
In 2007, 85 per cent of U.S. women were satisfied with their personal freedom—a figure that placed them among the most content globally. Today, American women rank among the bottom 20 countries on that same measure. It’s a stunning reversal for a nation that has long styled itself as a beacon of women’s rights.
Freedom and Politics
The Dobbs decision also fractured perceptions of freedom along political lines. In 2022, satisfaction among women who approved of President Joe Biden fell from 85 to 71 per cent, closing what had been a partisan divide. Since then, both groups—those who approved and those who disapproved of Biden—have reported similarly low levels of satisfaction.
Contrast that with 2020, when 88 per cent of women who approved of then-President Trump were satisfied with their personal freedom, compared to 78 per cent who disapproved. Support for political leaders, often a proxy for deeper partisan identity, now seems to have less power to shield individuals from pessimism.
This growing convergence of discontent suggests that dissatisfaction is not confined to the political left or right. Instead, a broader sense of decline seems to be taking root. Americans—of all stripes—feel less free than they once did.
A Broader Erosion?
These subjective perceptions are reinforced by external metrics. The V-Dem Women’s Civil Rights Index, a respected global measure of women’s legal rights and civil liberties, registered its lowest U.S. score since 1978: just 0.891 in 2024. The downward trajectory began immediately after the Dobbs decision. The data implies that women’s concerns are not just emotional reactions to court rulings—they reflect measurable, legal reversals in rights.
But women are not alone in their unease. American men, too, have experienced a drop in satisfaction since 2021, albeit less severe. This suggests broader disaffection with the cultural and political climate, and perhaps a growing sense that the American dream is no longer within reach.
The causes are manifold: rising costs of living, political gridlock, public distrust in media and institutions, increasing censorship concerns, and cultural battles over everything from school curricula to gender identity. In such a climate, it is not hard to see how even citizens of a democracy might begin to doubt the depth and durability of their freedoms.
Can the Trend Be Reversed?
History suggests that satisfaction with personal freedom can rebound. Trump’s early term bump in 2017 proves that much. The question is whether anything in 2025 can reverse the deeper slide. The data from 2024 may well be outdated before the year is out. Trump’s return to office could bring either a renewed sense of individual empowerment—or renewed fears of creeping authoritarianism, depending on whom you ask.
But there is a deeper question at stake: has the American idea of freedom itself changed?
Once seen as synonymous with opportunity, self-reliance, and minimal state interference, “freedom” now carries heavier baggage. For many women, it means autonomy over their bodies. For others, it means freedom from government overreach, cultural conformity, or economic precarity. If Americans no longer agree on what freedom is, it is little wonder they no longer agree on whether they have it.
Whatever happens in the months ahead, this much is clear: a country that prides itself on being the land of the free is, increasingly, uncertain that it still is. That is a national reckoning—quiet, creeping, but profound. And it will take more than slogans to resolve.
