Lost Income, Lost Friends — and Loss of Self-Respect
A new Pew Research Center survey finds the long-term unemployed are more likely than the short-term unemployed not only to have lost income, but also to have lost contact with close friends, suffered strains in family relations and lost some self-respect and confidence in their long-term career prospects.
Census 2010: Statistics and Next Steps
As the 2010 Census information-gathering phase winds down, Director Robert Groves offered some statistics to assess how the national count has gone thus far.
Rewriting the ‘Race’ Question
A former Census Director also has concerns about the way the government asks about race and ethnicity.
Canada Cuts the Long Form
Statistics Canada has announced that the nation’s 2011 Census will include the same eight basic questions that were asked of everyone in the 2006 count, and that the mandatory long form will be replaced with a voluntary survey.
The Great Recession at 30 Months
More than half (55%) of adults in the labor force say that since the economic slump began 30 months ago, they have suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers; the recession has also led to a new frugality and diminished expectations about retirement and their children’s future.
Census 2010: Non-response Follow-up Wrapping Up
Census Bureau Director Robert Groves says that census-takers are nearly done with knocking on doors of households from which 2010 Census forms were not received. Two managers fired for skipping interviews and using online data to fill out forms.
More Women Without Children
Nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s. While childlessness has risen for all racial and ethnic groups, and most education levels, it has fallen over the past decade for women with advanced degrees.
Minorities and the Recession-Era College Enrollment Boom
Freshman enrollment at post-secondary institutions rose by a 40-year record of 6% in the 2007-2008 school year, with Hispanics experiencing the largest increase in enrollments; half of the total increase in enrollment occurred in just 109 institutions out of nearly 6,100.
The Typical Modern Mother: There Isn’t One
Today’s mothers of newborns are more likely than their counterparts two decades earlier to be ages 35 and older, to have some college education, to be unmarried or to be nonwhite — but not all at once.
India’s Census and the Caste Question
In a controversial decision, government leaders in India have agreed that the nation’s 2011 census could include a tally of castes, the complex structure of traditional social classes last enumerated in 1931.
