Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Instead of traveling across country or across town for Thanksgiving this year, many grown sons and daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall, which now doubles as their recession-era refuge.
The share of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the United States hit an all-time high in October 2008, driven by a recession-era surge in enrollments at community colleges.
The proportion of Americans who are currently married has been diminishing for decades and is lower than it has been in at least half a century.
Women now make up almost half of the U.S. labor force, up from 38% in 1970. The public approves of this trend, but the change has come with a cost for many women — particularly working mothers of young children, who feel the tug of family responsibility much more acutely than do working fathers.
It may surprise anyone who has been following the charges of racism that have flared up during the debate over President Obama’s health care proposals, but the American public doesn’t see race as the source of the strongest social conflict in the country today.
Self-employed adults are significantly more satisfied with their jobs than other workers. They’re also more likely to work because they want to and not because they need a paycheck.
The American work force is graying — and not just because the American population itself is graying. Older adults are staying in the labor force longer, and younger adults are staying out of it longer.
While most Americans approve of laws that say treatment can be stopped if that’s what a terminally ill patient desires, they are split on what they would do personally in that situation.
They have different values, beliefs and lifestyles, but young and old today are disagreeing without being disagreeable. Both also share a fondness for Woodstock-era rock and roll.
If a latter-day Ponce de Leon were to search for a modern fountain of youth, he’d do well to explore America’s West. There he’d find the highest concentration of older adults in the United States who don’t think of themselves as old.
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About Pew Research Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
