Record share of women say they want to leave U.S. for good
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40% of young women say they'd like to leave the U.S. permanently, more than twice the share of American men, a new Gallup survey finds.
Why it matters: It's a sign of a widening divide between the genders in the U.S., driven by growing political dissatisfaction among American women.
The big picture: Women's desire to leave the country started surging right before President Trump's first term in office, and increased again in the years after the Supreme Court overturned abortion rights in the Dobbs decision.
- Partisanship plays a big role. Nearly 60% of young women identify as Democrats, or lean that way, compared with only 39% of younger men.
- Women "increasingly lack faith in national institutions and picture their futures beyond America's borders," the report says.
By the numbers: A record 40% of women age 15 to 44 said they'd like to permanently move to another country, according to the survey of 1,000 Americans aged 15 and older, conducted over the summer.
- That's four times as high as in 2014 and 21 points higher than among young men. Only 19% of men expressed a similar desire.
Zoom out: No country has previously recorded a gap between young men and women of 20 points or more when it comes to the desire to leave the country, per Gallup, which has surveyed on this question globally since 2007.
- And U.S. women are an outlier among wealthy nations. "Younger women aren't really expressing this view in anywhere near as great a number as they are in the U.S.," says Benedict Vigers, a senior global news writer at Gallup.
- By contrast, young men in the U.S. are less likely than their peers in wealthy countries to express a desire to leave.
- American women's results are in line with feelings among women in Zambia, where 39% of women wish to leave the country; and Malta (41%). But those numbers are roughly the same as for men in those countries.
Zoom in: Typically, unmarried women — less tied to place — are far more likely to express a desire to move than their married peers. But even there the gap is closing.
- There's just a four-point difference between married and unmarried women when it comes to the desire to migrate. In 2022, the gap was more than 10 points.
Yes, but: Wanting to move is not the same as actually leaving.
The bottom line: A growing share of young women in the U.S. don't like where the country is headed and lack faith in its institutions.
