Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census [...]
After running up record debt-to-income ratios during the bubble economy of the 2000s, young adults shed substantially more debt than older adults did during the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath—mainly by virtue of owning fewer houses and cars, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve Board and other government [...]
The median income of American households decreased by as much in the two years after the official end of the Great Recession as it did during the recession itself. The latest estimates from the Census Bureau show that the median income for U.S. households in 2011 was $50,054.1 In 2009, the year the Great Recession [...]
Americans do not rate their personal finances any better –or worse – than they did when Barack Obama took office nearly four years ago. And while income is a major factor in people’s views of their personal finances, so too is their partisan affiliation. The Pew Research Center has been tracking personal financial well-being for [...]
Chapter 1: Overview As the 2012 presidential candidates prepare their closing arguments to America’s middle class, they are courting a group that has endured a lost decade for economic well-being. Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some—but by no means all—of its characteristic faith [...]
At the Population Association of America’s annual conference in San Francisco this week, papers on the recession’s impact on families, wealth, children, young adults, older Americans and other realms of life will be presented in at least 10 of the 200-plus sessions. Much of the research is preliminary, but it raises intriguing questions. One paper tries to assess whether the poor economy has affected divorce rates.
Hispanics and Asians are gaining jobs at a faster rate in the economic recovery than are blacks and whites, immigrants are outpacing the native born, and men are faring better than women.
If there’s supposed to be a stigma attached to living with mom and dad through one’s late twenties or early thirties, today’s “boomerang generation” didn’t get that memo.
A sharp decline in fertility rates in the United States that started in 2008 is closely linked to the souring of the economy that began about the same time, according to a new analysis of multiple economic and demographic data sources.
A new Pew Research Center report explores the demographics and economics of multi-generational households. It concludes that moving to a multi-generational household appears to lift Americans out of poverty, and this is especially true for groups most affected by the recession. Household incomes also are higher for some groups in multi-generational households.
Without public debate or fanfare, large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: They moved in with relatives.
The spread of poverty across the United States that began at the onset of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and accelerated last year hit one fast-growing demographic group especially hard: Latino children.
A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center explores and analyzes the poverty rate for Hispanic children. Latino children now outnumber white children in poverty for the first time, according to census data cited in the report.
During the sluggish two-year recovery from the Great Recession, men have gained 768,000 jobs while women have lost 218,000 jobs. This new gender gap in employment trends represents a sharp turnabout from the recession itself, when men lost more than twice as many jobs as women.
The collapse of the U.S. housing market has not shaken the public’s confidence in the investment value of homeownership.
There is wide interest by researchers and journalists in finding data from the Census Bureau and other sources that could illustrate the impacts of the Great Recession on American life.
Among married couples with their own children under 18 at home, the share with a working wife and unemployed husband went up in 41 states in 2009, compared with the year before, according to a new Census Bureau analysis of data from the American Community Survey.
The Census Bureau just released its 2009 American Community Survey statistics, and included some additional analysis to address public interest in using the data to document the impact of the economic downturn.
For a narrow majority of Americans (55%), the Great Recession brought a mix of hardships, usually in combination: a spell of unemployment, missed mortgage or rent payments, shrinking paychecks and shattered household budgets, but for the other 45% of the country, the recession was largely free of such difficulties.
More than a third (36%) of Americans say the practice of “walking away” from a home mortgage is acceptable, at least under certain circumstances.
One child in 10 in the United States lives with a grandparent, a share that increased slowly and steadily over the past decade before rising sharply from 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession.
Workers who suffered a spell of unemployment during Great Recession are, on average, less satisfied with their new jobs than workers who didn’t. They are more likely to consider themselves over-qualified for their current position.
Interactive graphic that charts the impact of the “Great Recession” on Americans. Polling data with breakdowns by age, education, race, gender and political affiliation.
Of the 13 recessions that the American public has endured since the Great Depression of 1929-33, none has presented a more punishing combination of length, breadth and depth than this one.
The recession-era boom in the size of freshman classes at four-year colleges, community colleges and trade schools has been driven largely by a sharp increase in minority student enrollment.
There is a strong association between the magnitude of fertility change in 2008 across states and key economic indicators including changes in per capita income, housing prices and share of the working-age population that is employed across states.
The multi-generational American family household is staging a comeback — driven in part by the job losses and home foreclosures of recent years, but more so by demographic changes that have been gathering steam for decades.
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 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.
In the midst of a recession that has taken a heavy toll on many nest eggs, just over half of all working adults ages 50 to 64 say they may delay their retirement — and another 16% say they never expect to stop working.
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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.
