The vast majority of Americans say they doubt their children will lead better lives than they do now, a new Wall Street Journal/NORC poll revealed on Friday.

Some 78% of the poll's respondents said they did not feel confident their children would live in better conditions than them, the highest figure since polling on that question began in 1990 - a release on the poll said.

One of the main causes of the severe worries is the current situation of higher education, according to the poll's findings.

Due to the fact that many students do not acquire certain skills and are severely indebted and must return their loans over an extended period of time, almost 56% of respondents felt that a college degree is not worth the cost.

The release stated that 42% of respondents indicated they were happy with American education because it increased their chances of landing a decent job.

Moreover, 12% of respondents were said to be "very happy" with developments in their life, the lowest number in five decades.

By contrast, a third of respondents said they were "not too happy" - the highest number during the same period.

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WashPo said the poll was conducted among 1,019 adult Americans from March 1-13.

This comes at a time of economic turmoil for Washington, especially as food insecurity has increased for many households across the country 

The share of adults reporting food insecurity increased in the United States from 20% to 24%, between December 2021 and December 2022. In 2022, the rate of food insecurity was not statistically different from the rate in the year preceding the pandemic (23.4% in 2019).

One in 6 adults (16%) reported that their household received charitable food (groceries or free meals) in 2022, down from 17.4% in 2021, which translates to about 2.8 million fewer adults, and down from the peak in use in 2020 (19.7%), but much higher than the pre-pandemic rate in 2019 (12.7% or roughly 6.8 million other adults)

Due to the recent spike in prices, 62% of adults whose grocery costs increased a lot reported either reducing the amount of food they bought or not buying the kinds of foods they wanted, 43.3% withdrew money from savings, and 36.3% increased credit card debt, while about 16.5% received charitable food.

Read next: Food insecurity on the rise among US army members, their dependents

Moreover, the country is undergoing a banking crisis that is seeing people flocking to secure their assets from banks as it is expected for more than 50 US banks to collapse soon.

Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and New York's Signature Bank, which marked a historic failure in the US banking system, many have attributed the collapses to soaring interest rates.