Guest editorial: When young women would prefer to move abroad, America’s future is at risk

You could field a league of softball teams with the celebrities who’ve threatened to leave the U.S. if their presidential pick wasn’t elected in recent years.

What’s more striking today is that it isn’t only the Hollywood set floating the idea of relocating. Increasing numbers of ordinary Americans — especially younger women — say they’re thinking about moving abroad, not because of a single election outcome but because they doubt the country’s direction, economic prospects and social climate.

That shift should worry all of us.

For the second year, about 1 in 5 Americans indicated they’d like to move abroad permanently if given the option, according to Gallup. What their data uncovered is that this spiking trend is being driven primarily by younger women, between the ages of 15 and 44.

Among that group, a stunning 40% said they’d leave the U.S., compared with just 10% a decade ago. These aren’t people who’ve actually left, of course — but their interest itself is telling. Gallup notes the same phenomenon isn’t playing out in other advanced economies.

This isn’t about hypothetical moving plans. It’s about a generation of women questioning whether the United States is a place that values them, keeps them safe or offers a future worth building. If young women stop believing the country is on their side, that undermines everything from civic cohesion to the nation’s economic and demographic future.

Gallup noted the first dramatic upward shift in young women’s dissatisfaction in 2016, during the last stages of Barack Obama’s presidency and ahead of President Donald Trump’s first term. A desire to flee is not escalating among Gen X and boomers. Just 14% of women 45 and older and 8% of men who are 45 and older would leave. And just 19% of younger men would seek their fortunes elsewhere.

This misalignment of worldviews between younger men and younger women also is causing much-observed tensions in the dating pool, driven by a mismatch of values and core beliefs. Yet even married women and women with children are expressing a growing desire to leave.

Numbers like these may seem like outliers, but they’re often warning signs of fixable problems.

Gallup offers some insight into what’s driving these results, and notes that as this trend has emerged, young women’s faith in institutions has fallen sharply. Over the past 10 years, young women’s confidence in the courts has dropped from 55% to 32%, a shift Gallup speculates may be tied to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Politics undoubtedly plays a part, and it’s worth noting that 59% of younger women identify as or lean Democrat, compared with just 39% of younger men.

Even if few of these disgruntled women ultimately leave, and no doubt few of them will, that’s not the real danger. We’re creeping uncomfortably close to half of young women reporting they’d prefer to build their future somewhere else, and the message is unmistakable: American institutions are failing at persuading its next generation of women that this is a place where they will thrive.

A nation that wants stronger families, a more stable workforce and a healthier democracy can’t afford a future built on resignation or escape. Our challenge now isn’t to dismiss these findings as fantasy, but to make this a country young women still want to call home.

Written by the Chicago Tribune editorial board. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.