Is It Still Worth Believing That “Work Hard and You’ll Make It”?

When you’re 30, still living in a rented apartment, paying off a student loan for a degree nobody seems to value, and watching housing prices rise faster than your salary, it’s incredibly hard to keep believing in the fairy tale of the social elevator that takes you up if you just push the right buttons.

And you’re not alone. Over the past 15 years, belief in the idea that “hard work = success” has fallen to historic lows in almost every developed country. This isn’t just “lazy millennials whining.” It’s a massive psychological phenomenon now called the erosion of belief in social mobility. And it doesn’t just hit your wallet — it hits your mind, hard.

What exactly breaks inside your head when you stop believing in a fair shot

In psychology, there’s a concept called Locus of Control (Julian Rotter, 1966). It refers to who or what you think decides whether good or bad things happen to you.

• Internal Locus: If you believe the outcome depends on you, you put in effort, make plans, and get back up after failures.
• External Locus: If you’re convinced everything is decided by “connections,” “rich parents,” “the system,” or “the economy,” motivation collapses, and helplessness and anxiety skyrocket.

A 2023 study (Matamoros-Lima et al., Spain) found a direct link: the lower the perceived social mobility in a country, the higher the rates of depression and burnout among young people. It’s not just “being poor leads to depression,” but specifically “having no realistic way out through my own effort leads to depression.”

Back in the 1970s, Martin Seligman described learned helplessness. Dogs that couldn’t escape electric shocks eventually stopped even trying — even when the door was opened later. People with a strong belief in social mobility show dramatically higher resilience to stress and better mental health. Those without it… don’t.

The same thing is happening now to entire generations. We’re not dogs in cages, but when you try for ten years and nothing moves, your brain eventually concludes: “My actions don’t matter.” And it turns the motivation switch off.

Numbers that are hard to ignore

• Pew Research Center, 2022: Only 42% of Americans now believe “hard work leads to success.” In 1999, it was 74%.
• Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2024: A staggering 63% of respondents expect their financial situation to be worse than their parents’.
• In France, only 29% of young adults believe they will ever own a home in their lifetime (IFOP, 2024).
• In Germany, the share of young people who see the system as “unfair” jumped from 38% in 2010 to 68% in 2024 (Allensbach Institute).

Why older generations don’t get it (and vice versa)

People who are 55+ today grew up in an era when the economy actually rewarded effort. In the 1980s in the U.S., finishing high school and getting a factory job was often enough to buy a house, a car, and retire comfortably. The same path today leads to a warehouse job at Amazon for $15 an hour with no health insurance.

• Older people say: “I made it, why can’t you?”
• Younger people hear: “You’re just lazy.”

This is the classic Just-World Fallacy (Melvin Lerner, 1965): it is psychologically painful to accept that the world can be unfair, so it’s easier to blame the victim than to question the system.

Can you restore belief in yourself when the system really is rigged?

Yes — but it takes two things happening at the same time.

1. Micro level — Working on your own psychology
   Practice realistic optimism (not “everything will be fine,” but “I can influence what I actually can influence”). Build Self-Efficacy — the belief that your concrete actions lead to concrete results. Albert Bandura proved this is the strongest shield against depression. You must collect small wins. Every time action leads to a result, your brain relearns to trust itself.
2. Macro level — Changing the rules of the game
   Without affordable housing, education that doesn’t saddle you with lifelong debt, and wages that allow saving, no amount of “mindset” will save you. Psychology alone is powerless here.

Instead of a neat conclusion

Belief in social mobility isn’t just “positive thinking.” It’s a basic psychological resource, like oxygen. When it’s taken away, people don’t become “lazy” — they become sick, angry, or numb.

So if right now everything feels pointless, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re having a perfectly healthy reaction to abnormal conditions.

The only way to get your strength back is to do both at once: learn to see your small circles of control again and loudly demand that the big circle of control is returned to all of us.

Because if we lose that belief completely, we won’t just stop working hard. We’ll stop believing we even deserve a better life. And that’s dangerous not only for us, but for everyone.

Key sources worth reading yourself:

• Matamoros-Lima et al. (2023). Perceived social mobility and mental health.
• Deloitte. (2024). Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey.
• Pew Research Center. (2022). Trends in American Values.
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control.