Here's something striking: Four in ten American women between ages 15 and 44 say they'd leave the country permanently if they could. A decade ago, that figure was one in ten. The share has quadrupled, and it's grown faster than for any other age or gender group in the United States.

The Gender Gap Is Widening Fast

New Gallup data captures just how quickly this shift has happened and how unusual it looks compared to the recent past. Young men are also more interested in moving abroad than they used to be, but not at anywhere close to the same pace. Right now there's a 21-percentage-point gap between younger men and women on this question — the widest Gallup has ever recorded for the U.S. or any other country since they started tracking it.

This didn't happen overnight. Gallup first spotted a clear uptick around 2016, and the trend kept climbing through both the Trump and Biden administrations. That timing suggests we're looking at something deeper than just a reaction to one president or one political moment.

The U.S. Is an Outlier Among Wealthy Countries

What really makes the U.S. stand out is that this surge isn't happening elsewhere. Across the 38 wealthiest countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the percentage of younger women who say they'd like to migrate has held fairly steady — usually somewhere between 20% and 30%, according to Gallup.

Back in the early 2010s, younger American women were actually less likely than their counterparts in other wealthy nations to want to leave. But since 2016, that flipped entirely. Young U.S. women are now consistently more likely to imagine building their lives somewhere else.

Where would they go? Canada tops the list. Other popular destinations include New Zealand, Italy, and Japan.

Trust in Institutions Has Cratered

Age and gender tell part of the story, but politics clearly matters too. In 2025, Americans who disapprove of the country's leadership were 25% more likely to say they want to leave than those who approve — one of the biggest gaps Gallup has ever recorded on this question.

Younger women have also experienced a dramatic drop in confidence in major U.S. institutions. Their trust in the government, the courts, the military, and the honesty of elections has fallen more sharply than for any other demographic group over the past decade. Gallup reports that younger women's confidence in the judicial system dropped from 55% in 2015 to just 32% in 2025.

The 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade may have accelerated this decline, but Gallup notes that the desire to leave started climbing well before that ruling came down.

Family Ties Aren't Changing the Calculus

In most countries, people without kids or who aren't married tend to be more open to the idea of relocating abroad. But Gallup's latest data suggests younger American women feel this way pretty much regardless of their family situation.

About 41% of married women and 45% of single women under 45 say they would move abroad permanently if they could. Women with children at home show similar levels of interest. That's unusual — in other contexts, having kids or a spouse typically anchors people more firmly to where they are.

A Different Kind of Future

The bottom line is that the desire among younger American women to leave the U.S. has grown faster and further than it has for almost anyone else, and more than for women in other wealthy nations. Whether most of them will actually pack up and move is an open question. Saying you'd like to leave and actually leaving are very different things.

But the data makes one thing clear: this generation is thinking differently about the future and where they want to build their lives. And that shift, regardless of whether it translates into action, tells us something important about how a significant segment of the population views the country right now.