A record-high number of young American women now say they would like to leave the U.S. permanently, according to a new Gallup survey released Thursday.
The survey found that 40% of women ages 15 to 44 say they would move to another country, given the chance. The number more than doubles the 19% of men in the same age group who say they would, the largest gender gap Gallup has ever recorded.
Gallup’s data show that the trend has been building for more than a decade. When asked for the first time in 2014, only 17% of young women said they wanted to leave the country. Interest in leaving the country rose sharply in 2016, coinciding with the final year of former President Barack Obama’s second term, and continued under the Trump and Biden administrations.
Marital status and parenthood have become less predictive. Between 2024 and 2025, 41% of married women and 45% of unmarried women reported wanting to move abroad, up from 22% and 38% respectively, between 2023 and 2024.
Older women are still far less likely than their younger counterparts to consider leaving the U.S. permanently, but they now outpace men in their age group. Fourteen percent of women over 45, compared with 8% of men, said they would leave the country in 2025, a reversal from 2024 when just 6% of women and 14% of men in the group expressed that desire.
This gender divide was evident in the Nov. 4 elections, where young women overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates nationwide, including 81% for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, 81% for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and 84% for Zohran Mamdani in New York City, according to NBC News exit polls. Young men, by contrast, showed less enthusiasm for the Democratic slate, with only 58% backing Spanberger, 57% supporting Sherrill and 67% favoring Mamdani.
Nationally, nearly 60% of young women identify as or lean toward Democrats, compared with 39% of men, according to Gallup.
Underlying the trends is a collapse in trust toward America’s foundational institutions, particularly among women.
Since 2015, younger women have experienced the steepest decline of any demographic in trust in the government, judiciary, military and elections, dropping 17 points overall, Gallup found. Confidence in the courts fell particularly sharply following the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, dropping from 55% to 32%.
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