GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
PRINCETON, NJ -- Despite the amount of time it took the U.S. Mint to develop the new golden $1 coin, Americans are still partial to their familiar paper money. In a Gallup poll conducted April 7-9, 2000, a majority of the American public said they would prefer to be given a dollar bill -- rather than a dollar coin -- as change following a purchase in a store. The poll shows 53% preferring to receive a dollar bill and only 22% preferring the coin. The other 25% had no preference between the two or had no opinion on the subject.
Younger Americans are more likely than older Americans to want to get the coin as change. Thirty-one percent of 18- to 29-year-olds say they would prefer to get the coin instead of a dollar bill. This is significantly higher than the 20% of 30- to 49-year-olds, and 18% of 50- to 64-year-olds who said the same thing.
With the United States Dollar Coin Act of 1997, signed into law by President Clinton in December 1997, the U.S. Congress established that a new dollar coin should be part of American currency, and established the design parameters for the new coin. On May 4, 1999, the government officially revealed the final designs of Sacagawea and the American eagle that would appear on the new coin. The coin officially began production in November 1999.
Since the dollar coin went into full-scale production, the U.S. Mint has used an innovative marketing campaign featuring an image of George Washington to introduce its new "golden dollar." But it seems the public has been against the idea from the start. In a Gallup poll conducted in June 1995, 77% of the public said they opposed replacing the $1 bill with a $1 coin. Even though the U.S. Mint is not replacing the dollar bill with this new dollar coin, the public is certainly opposed to the idea of replacement, and therefore may harbor some negative feelings about the dollar coin in general.
Historically speaking, Americans have been unenthusiastic about dollar coins for some time. A Gallup poll conducted in 1979 showed that 66% of those who had seen the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin disliked it, while only 15% liked it. When asked specifically why they disliked the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, the largest percentage (44%) said it looked too much like a quarter. The U.S. Mint's painstaking plan to develop the new coin and the subsequent marketing campaign were specifically intended to overcome the "mistakes" it felt it made in introducing the Susan B. Anthony coin.
Other Currency Changes
When the U.S. Mint released the redesigned $20 bill in 1998, the
American public was not overwhelmingly positive about it either. In
a survey conducted in November of that year, 55% of the public said
they either "liked" or "loved" the new $20 bill, while 34% said
they either "disliked" or "hated" it. In that same survey, almost
one in four Americans (39%) said the U.S. should go back to
printing the old bill, while the majority (61%) said they thought
the new $20 bill did not "look like real American money."
Looking further back into the history of American currency, Gallup found, in a 1961 survey, that 59% of Americans were opposed to printing in different colors to help differentiate between denominations of currency.
Survey Methods
The results below are based on telephone interviews with a randomly
selected national sample of 1,006 adults, 18 years and older,
conducted April 7-9, 2000. For results based on this sample, one
can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error
attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus
3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question
wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can
introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion
polls.
As you may know, the U.S. government is introducing a new coin worth one dollar. The government will continue to produce dollar bills, and both dollar bills and the new dollar coin will be accepted as legal currency. If you were buying something and the store owed you one dollar in change, would you want the cashier to give you a dollar bill or the new dollar coin?
|
Dollar |
Dollar |
EITHER/ |
No |
|
|
2000 Apr 7-9 |
53% |
22 |
24 |
1 |
(vol.) Volunteered response
