A new survey of 1,426 registered voters, conducted by GQR on behalf of The Century Foundation (TCF),1 provides fresh evidence of the extent to which families are struggling in President Trump’s economy. While financial insecurity is widespread, younger Americans, people of color, and women are disproportionately suffering and increasingly forced to make difficult tradeoffs—from skipping medical care and meals to relying on payday loans and cash advances.
TCF’s findings also shed new light on the distinct challenges facing working-class Americans2—a group that backed Trump in large numbers in 2024,3 but today experience a markedly different, harsher economy than their college-educated peers. Working-class voters feel the pain of Trump’s inflationary decisions most acutely and are more likely to depend on risky, high-cost financial products such as payday loans to bridge the gap between their wages and rising expenses. Lastly, Americans of all backgrounds overwhelmingly support policies that put money back in families’ pockets and curb the influence of corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
This report highlights three core findings from the survey:
- Americans increasingly cannot afford the basic building blocks of a healthy, stable life. Roughly three in ten voters delayed or skipped medical care in the past year due to cost, while nearly two-thirds switched to cheaper groceries or bought less food altogether. About half tapped into their savings to cover everyday expenses.
- Working-class Americans live in a substantially harsher economy—and they feel the strain of worsening economic conditions more acutely in their lives. Those without degrees are roughly twice as likely to skip medication or a meal, and they are also more likely to fall behind on bills, carry debt, and turn to risky payment tools to make ends meet.
- Voters across demographic groups believe corporations and the wealthy hold too much power, and they overwhelmingly support policies that put money in the hands of working people. Large shares also want the government to take decisive action to limit the influence of corporations.
As families struggle with rising costs and paychecks that fail to keep pace, Trump and Republicans in Congress are advancing policies that will further hurt household finances. In fact, our findings here likely understate the true scale of Americans’ economic insecurity, given the survey was conducted in October, before the full impacts of massive health care price hikes set in for some 250 million people—changes that will push even more families to skip meals, delay medical care, and take on risky debt. In a sign of just how salient cost-of-living concerns are for voters, Democratic candidates from New York City to Virginia to New Jersey won competitive elections in November by centering affordability issues at every stage of their campaigns.
Key Findings
Takeaway #1: From health care to groceries, Americans can’t afford the basics of a healthy, stable life in Trump’s economy—leading many to take drastic measures to stay afloat.
With health care costs set to spike, Americans are already struggling to afford medical care, with around one-quarter forgoing treatment and skipping medications in the past year to save money.
In 2026, 250 million Americans will face health insurance premium increases far exceeding inflation, wage growth, and Social Security adjustments—price hikes with few historical parallels. This avalanche of higher costs will land as families are already struggling to cover basic medical needs.
Our survey shows that nearly three in ten Americans (29 percent) report delaying or going without medical care in the past year, including 37 percent of Hispanics, 33 percent of women, and 32 percent of Black Americans. Among the youngest group we surveyed, adults ages 18–29, nearly half (49 percent) delayed or skipped medical care.
Similarly, one in four people (24 percent) delayed or skipped buying doctor-prescribed medication in the past year due to their finances, with women twice as likely as men to do so (32 percent versus 16 percent, respectively).
Figure 1
Americans are struggling to afford food at alarming rates, with nearly two-thirds switching to cheaper groceries or buying less food altogether in the past year.
Under Trump, families are facing higher prices on everything from utility bills to holiday meals. As a result, roughly two-thirds of Americans are either switching to cheaper groceries or buying less food when shopping. This holds true across demographics, but the burden falls especially hard on women and people of color. While only half of white men are pulling back on groceries, more than seven in ten Black people (74 percent), Hispanics (71 percent), and women (72 percent) are struggling to afford food.
Even more concerning is the number of people skipping meals, with over one-third of respondents (34 percent) saying they skipped a meal in the past year. This includes 44 percent of Black Americans (compared to 32 percent of white respondents) and 54 percent of adults under age 30.
Figure 2
In addition to foregoing medicine and food, families are draining savings, cutting retirement contributions, and delaying major purchases to make ends meet.
Nearly half of Americans (48 percent) tapped into savings to cover routine expenses in the past year, including more than half of Black (55 percent) and Hispanic Americans (57 percent), women (52 percent), and adults under age 30 (59 percent).
More than one in three (35 percent) reduced retirement contributions to make ends meet, and 46 percent delayed major purchases such as cars or appliances—further evidence of the drag that Trump’s policies are having on the economy.
Figure 3
Voters across the political spectrum are pessimistic about the economy and expect their own financial situation to worsen under Trump.
By a two-to-one margin (66 percent versus 34 percent), a supermajority of Americans say the economy is not doing well today, despite what Trump claims. This negative outlook is especially pronounced among Black voters (83 percent), women (73 percent), and younger adults (74 percent). Remarkably, even 43 percent of Trump voters and 43 percent of Republicans agree that the economy is not doing well.
Figure 4
Looking ahead, 82 percent of Americans expect the cost of living to rise over the next two years, including 71 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of Trump voters. Only 11 percent of voters expect prices to fall.
Figure 5
Takeaway #2: Working-class Americans live and work in a different, harsher economy—and they feel financial strain much more acutely in their daily lives.
There is broad consensus that the economy is doing poorly, but working-class people are significantly more likely to make painful sacrifices to pay the bills.
While negative perceptions of the economy are near-universal, working-class Americans are far more likely to make drastic decisions to manage rising costs. Working-class voters are more than twice as likely as college-educated voters to delay or skip medication (30 percent versus 14 percent) and are nearly twice as likely to skip a meal (41 percent versus 23 percent). They are also more likely to delay medical care (34 percent versus 21 percent), tap into savings (54 percent versus 36 percent), and reduce retirement contributions (39 percent versus 26 percent).
Figure 6
Working-class people are more reliant on debt in an increasingly financialized economy—and thus are more susceptible to the higher costs and greater risks associated with that debt.
As a group, working-class Americans have lower incomes than Americans overall and are therefore more likely to struggle to pay their bills. Our survey bears this out: more than one-third of Americans (35 percent) were late paying a bill in the past year, but the rate is much higher among the working-class (42 percent versus 23 percent of college-educated people).
High prices have pushed more Americans toward risk-laden financing mechanisms such as “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) and payday loans to bridge the gap between their earnings and the cost of living. These payment plans increasingly cover not just big-ticket items, but also everyday essentials such as groceries, rent, and child care.
We find significant variation in the use of these payment options by education, however. Working-class voters are much more likely than college-educated voters to rely on high-cost credit such as BNPL to spread out purchases (36 percent versus 24 percent), and non-college-educated people are roughly twice as likely to take out a payday loan (19 percent versus 10 percent).
Figure 7
These differences in behavior reflect deeper disparities in how working-class and college-educated Americans participate in the economy. In our survey, 55 percent of college-educated people report being salaried employees, compared with just 19 percent of working-class respondents. Conversely, 53 percent of working-class people said they get paid hourly, compared with just 27 percent of those with degrees—hourly jobs that are associated with lower wages, fewer benefits, and greater financial vulnerability.
Our survey confirms as much: 50 percent of working-class respondents said they earned less than $50,000 in 2024, roughly three times the rate of college-educated Americans (17 percent). Working-class Americans were also more likely than college-educated Americans to report being unemployed or temporarily out of work (11 percent versus 4 percent) and more likely to have taken on a second job or side hustle in the past year (29 percent versus 23 percent).
These structural differences help explain why working-class Americans are more reliant on debt in today’s economy. In our survey, 70 percent of non-college-educated people said they carry debt such as student loans, medical debt, personal loans, or credit card balances,4 compared with 59 percent of college-educated Americans.
This dynamic reflects a broader trend in an increasingly financialized economy whereby households with lower incomes are more exposed to corporate practices that leverage their hardship to extract profit. Studies show that powerful financial institutions regularly impose higher costs on already cash-strapped families in the form of late fees, overdraft charges, high interest rates, dodgy billing practices, aggressive debt collection, and more. In effect, working-class people both need these riskier, costlier financing tools to pay their bills—and, they are the people who can least afford these risky, costly options in the long run.
Takeaway #3: Americans of all backgrounds believe corporations and the wealthy have too much power—and they overwhelmingly support policies that put more money in the hands of working families.
College-educated and working-class Americans agree that the economy is not doing well. Yet when digging into the specific reasons for why the economy isn’t working, notable differences start to emerge.
Working-class Americans are more likely to fault corporations and the wealthy for rigging the system against them—and they think it’s a major problem that corporations have escaped accountability.
While a large majority of Americans believe that corporations and the wealthy wield excessive influence, working-class voters express particularly high levels of concern with unchecked corporate power. When asked how much of a problem it is, on a scale of zero to ten,5 that wealthy people and corporations are rarely held accountable when they break the law, 39 percent of working-class voters gave it the highest score of ten, whereas only 26 percent of degree-holders scored it a ten.
Similarly, 31 percent of working-class voters said that health insurance companies denying doctor-prescribed treatments is a top problem in America, compared with just 20 percent of college-educated voters who gave it a ten. Nearly three in ten working-class respondents (29 percent) consider private companies buying up hospitals and doctors’ offices to be a major problem (versus 21 percent of college-educated respondents), and one in four working-class people (25 percent) said that big corporations driving small neighborhood business out of neighborhoods is a major problem, compared with 14 percent of college-educated people.
Working-class Americans—and Americans overall—resoundingly back policies that lower costs, level the playing field, and curb predatory financial behavior.
Working-class and college-educated Americans differ sharply in both their lived economic experiences as well as in the political candidates they tend to support. But on the actual policies that shape their economic lives, working-class and college-educated voters are highly aligned: both groups overwhelmingly favor populist economic policies and robust government action to rein in corporate overreach.
Nearly nine in ten Americans support banning health insurance companies from denying patients doctor-recommended care (88 percent) and prohibiting companies from accessing children’s private data through their schools (89 percent).6 There is comparable support for banning corporate money in politics (86 percent), preventing Wall Street banks and hedge funds from buying up single-family homes (84 percent), breaking up corporate monopolies (86 percent), and breaking up Big Tech firms (78 percent). Notably, for each of these policies, working-class and college-educated voters express virtually identical levels of support.
Figure 8
Americans also express broad support for policies aimed at lowering costs and providing relief to working families. More than eight in ten voters favor increasing Social Security benefits by raising taxes on incomes above $180,000 (86 percent) and to invest in building housing to lower costs (86 percent). Roughly three in four support providing all working and middle class families with free child care, funded by taxes on large corporations (74 percent), and raising the minimum wage to $17 an hour (74 percent).7 Large majorities also support adopting a Medicare for All system (74 percent) and making it easier for workers to join a union (78 percent).
Figure 9
Conclusion
Financial insecurity is pervasive and worsening under President Trump. Families across the country are skipping doctors visits, forgoing medication, pulling back on groceries, and turning to risky financial tools to make ends meet. Indeed, earlier TCF research found that one in four Americans (25 percent) had skipped a meal in the past year; this survey, conducted just months later, shows that figure has climbed to more than one in three (34 percent).
Working-class Americans in particular are living and working in a different, harsher economy than their college-educated peers. They are more likely to skip meals and medication, fall behind on bills, carry debt, rely on costly financing such as payday loans, and work in unstable hourly jobs with low pay.
These voters, like all voters, want policymakers to address the cost-of-living crisis, curb corporate abuse, and put more money in the hands of working families. With even greater price hikes on the horizon in 2026, leaders in both parties should listen to what voters are telling them—and act decisively to make life in America more affordable and fair.
Survey Methodology
On behalf of The Century Foundation, GQR conducted a 20-minute mixed mode survey among 1,426 registered voters (1,025 base, plus oversamples of 200 Hispanic non-college-educated voters and 200 Black non-college-educated voters) in the United States from October 14–24, 2025. Registered voters for the online portion of the survey were drawn from an online panel; text-to-web respondents were found through voter file samples. Text-to-web made up 22 percent of respondents, a panel sample made up the other 78 percent.
If this entire poll were conducted among a probability sample, the margin of error would be +/- 3.06 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. The margin of error is higher among subgroups. Because the online sample is based on those who initially self-selected for participation in the panel rather than a probability sample, traditional estimates of sampling error do not apply.
All results are expressed as percentages unless otherwise noted. Percentages may not sum to 100 percent due to rounding or multiple responses. Net results cited in the text may not exactly match individual results due to rounding.
Notes
- The survey was conducted by GQR from October 14–24, 2025. For more information, see the methodology section at the end of this report. Complete survey results, including cross-tabs, are available upon request.
- Throughout this report, we use “working class” and “non-college-educated” interchangeably. In both cases, our findings refer to GQR survey results for non-college-educated registered voters in the United States (total non-college n = 929, with oversamples of 200 Hispanic non-college voters and 200 Black non-college voters).
- In our survey, 89 percent of non-college-educated respondents said they voted in the 2024 election, with 54 percent of non-college voters (and 66 percent of non-college white voters) saying they voted for Donald Trump, compared to 39 percent of college-educated voters who cast their ballot for Trump—findings that largely mirror other analyses of 2024 voting patterns using voter file data.
- Respondents were asked, “About how much debt do you currently carry, including things like student loan debt, medical debt, personal loans and credit card debt, but not including mortgage debt or money you might owe on a car?”
- Survey respondents were asked, “Please indicate on a scale of zero to ten whether each of the following represents a problem in this country. A zero would mean this is not at all a problem. A ten would mean that this is a major problem in this country. A five would be a neutral response. You can use any number from zero to ten.”
- For each policy tested, respondents were asked if they strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose the proposal [or were not sure]. The findings presented here refer to total support, which includes both “strongly support” and “somewhat support” responses.
- We also tested raising the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour, and 69 percent of voters were supportive, including 70 percent of working class voters.
