Four in 10 Young Women Want to Leave America
New research indicates that 40% of women would leave the U.S. if they were able to.
About one-fifth of Americans would permanently leave the U.S. and move to another country if they could—and young women are particularly likely to want to emigrate, new research shows.
The data, collected by Gallup, shows that in 2025, 20% of adult Americans said that they would want to leave the U.S. if leaving were an option. That figure marks a one percentage point decline from the proportion who said they wanted to emigrate a year ago, but a 10 percentage point increase from 2010. At that time, only 10% said that they would quit the U.S. if they could.
Women aged between 15 and 44 were most likely to indicate that they wanted to move, with some 40% saying they’d leave it possible. This also marks a slight decrease from the 44% who admitted to wanting to emigrate last year, but it’s still a staggering four times higher than the 10% who shared this desire in 2014.
“The sharp rise in younger women wanting to leave the U.S. has created a large gender gap between them and their male counterparts. Today’s 21-percentage-point gap between younger men (19%) and women (40%) wanting to leave the U.S. is the widest Gallup has recorded on this trend,” researchers at Gallup wrote in presenting the data.
“Since Gallup began measuring this question globally in 2007, few countries have shown gender gaps this wide in the desire to migrate. Before the U.S. in 2025, no country had recorded a gap of 20 points or more between younger men and women,” they added. — Josie Cox
Read the full Gallup analysis here.
