Americans believe trust has declined in their country, whether it involves their fellow citizens’ faith in each other or their confidence in the federal government, according to a wide-ranging new Pew Research Center survey. And adults ages 18 to 29 stand out for their comparatively low levels of trust in a number of these areas.
Around three-quarters (73%) of U.S. adults under 30 believe people “just look out for themselves” most of the time. A similar share (71%) say most people “would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance,” and six-in-ten say most people “can’t be trusted.” Across all three of these questions, adults under 30 are significantly more likely than their older counterparts to take a pessimistic view of their fellow Americans.
All told, nearly half of young adults (46%) are what the Center’s report defines as “low trusters” – people who, compared with other Americans, are more likely to see others as selfish, exploitative and untrustworthy, rather than helpful, fair and trustworthy. Older Americans are less likely to be low trusters. For example, just 19% of adults ages 65 and older fall into this category, according to the survey, which was conducted in late 2018 among 10,618 U.S. adults. (You can read more here about how the study grouped Americans into low, medium and high trust categories.)
Transubstantiation – the idea that during Mass, the bread and wine used for Communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ – is central to the Catholic faith. Indeed, the Catholic Church teaches that “the Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’”
But a new Pew Research Center survey finds that most self-described Catholics don’t believe this core teaching. In fact, nearly seven-in-ten Catholics (69%) say they personally believe that during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine used in Communion “are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” Just one-third of U.S. Catholics (31%) say they believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”
Despite ongoing debates over science-related issues, Americans have broadly positive views of scientists and their work, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. But Americans are more tepid when it comes to trusting scientists’ competence, credibility and concern for the public interest – and they are largely skeptical of scientists’ transparency and accountability.
Here are five key findings about public trust in scientists, drawn from the new survey:
1Public confidence in scientists to act in the public interest has increased in recent years. Overall, 35% of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists, up 14 percentage points from 2016. Americans have about the same level of confidence in scientists as they do in the military – and more than they do in some other groups and institutions, including the news media, business leaders and elected officials.
2Half or more of Americans have positive views about each of six professional groups asked about in the survey. The public is warmest toward medical doctors: About three-quarters (74%) say they have a mostly positive view of doctors, 18% are neutral and just 8% have a negative view. Majorities also have positive opinions of medical researchers (68%), dietitians (60%), environmental health specialists (60%) and environmental researchers (57%). About half (51%) have positive overall views of nutrition researchers. Read More →
The teen birth rate in the United States is at a record low, dropping below 18 births per 1,000 girls and women ages 15 to 19 for the first time since the government began regularly collecting data on this group, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
In 2018, the birth rate among 15- to 19-year-old girls and women was less than half of what it had been in 2008 (41.5 births per 1,000). Asians and Pacific Islanders led the way over this time, followed by Hispanics, with teen birth rate declines of 74% and 65%, respectively. Rates for white and black teens fell by more than 50% over the past decade as well.
About one-in-five U.S. adults say they use Twitter, a share that has remained consistent over the past several years. (Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)
Today, millions of Americans use Twitter to break and comment on news, disseminate official pronouncements, organize campaigns and protests or just let their friends know what’s on their minds.
Here are 10 facts about Americans and Twitter, based on recent Pew Research Center surveys and other studies:
1Around one-in-five U.S. adults (22%) say they use Twitter, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey. The share of Americans who use the platform has remained consistent over the past several years and is similar to the share who use Snapchat (24%) and WhatsApp (20%). But a much larger share of U.S. adults use YouTube (73%) and Facebook (69%).
2Twitter users tend to be younger and to have more education and higher incomes than U.S. adults overall, according to a late 2018 survey. While Americans overall are about equally divided between those ages 18 to 49 and those 50 and older, U.S. adults on Twitter are nearly three times as likely to be younger than 50 as to be 50 and older (73% vs. 27%). Overall, 42% of U.S. adult Twitter users have at least a college degree, compared with 31% of all Americans. And 41% of adult Twitter users earn at least $75,000 a year, compared with 32% of all American adults. Read More →
Compared with other Americans, U.S. Jews have relatively high levels of religious knowledge – including about non-Jewish religions like Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. But most non-Jewish Americans are unable to answer some basic factual questions about Jewish practices, including about the Jewish Sabbath and New Year.
This disconnect is apparent in Pew Research Center’s new religious knowledge survey, which asked Americans 32 fact-based multiple-choice questions about religion, each of which had a single correct answer. The survey included questions that gauged knowledge about a range of different religious groups and varied widely in difficulty. (You can test your own knowledge by answering some of these questions in our new quiz.)
On average, U.S. Jews answer about 19 questions right (18.7, to be exact) – considerably more than a variety of other religious groups, including members of several Christian traditions as well as people who say their religion is “nothing in particular.” The only groups comparable to Jews in their levels of religious knowledge are atheists (17.9 questions right, on average), agnostics (17.0) and evangelical Protestants (15.5). While they are more religious than atheists and agnostics, of course, Jewish Americans are on the whole also much less likely than other U.S. adults to consider religion very important in their lives.
An empty newsroom at The Denver Post as layoffs were being announced in March 2018. (Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Layoffs continue to pummel U.S. newspapers. Roughly a quarter of papers with an average Sunday circulation of 50,000 or more experienced layoffs in 2018, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
The layoffs come on top of the roughly one-third of papers in the same circulation range that experienced layoffs in 2017. What’s more, the number of jobs typically cut by newspapers in 2018 tended to be higher than in the year before.
Mid-market newspapers were the most likely to suffer layoffs in 2018 – unlike in 2017, when the largest papers most frequently saw cutbacks. Meanwhile, digital-native news outlets also faced continued layoffs: In 2018, 14% of the highest-traffic digital-native news outlets went through layoffs, down slightly from one-in-five in 2017.
The following analysis examines layoffs at large newspapers and digital-native news outlets during the full 2017 and 2018 calendar years. An earlier analysis by the Center looked at layoffs at news organizations covering the period from January 2017 to April 2018.
Donte Small turns in his final exam to his professor, Jill Zimmerman, at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Racial and ethnic diversity has increased among college faculty in the United States over the past two decades, but faculty are still much more likely than students to be white.
In fall 2017, about three-quarters of postsecondary faculty members in the U.S. were white (76%), compared with 55% of undergraduates, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In contrast, around a quarter of postsecondary faculty were nonwhite (24%), versus 45% of students. (Postsecondary faculty includes all faculty across institutions that grant associate degrees and higher.)
Kindergartners listen as teacher Bertha Picasso reads a book in Spanish at Marjorie Veeh Elementary School in Tustin, California. (Jeff Gritchen/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
Today’s kindergartners offer a glimpse of tomorrow’s demographics. The number of states where at least one-in-five public school kindergartners are Latino has more than doubled since 2000, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
In 18 states and the District of Columbia, Latino children accounted for at least 20% of public school kindergarten students in 2017 (the most recent year available), up from eight states in 2000. However, only two states – Massachusetts and Nebraska – and the District have joined this list since 2010, while one state (Idaho) dropped off. This reflects the fact that Hispanic population growth has slowed over the past decade or so due to a declining number of births and a decrease in immigration, particularly from Mexico.
At nearly 60 million, Hispanics are the nation’s largest racial or ethnic minority group. They make up 18% of the U.S. population and have dispersed across the country widely since the 1980s. The states where at least one-in-five kindergartners are Hispanic include some with historically few Hispanics, such as Massachusetts, Nebraska and Washington.
Since 2014, the number of K-12 public school students from racial and ethnic minority groups – including Hispanic, black and Asian Americans – has been higher than the white student population nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In fall 2019, children from racial and ethnic minority groups are projected to make up 52.9% of public K-12 students. That’s a sharp increase from 1995, when minority groups accounted for just 35.2% of these students.
By a wide margin, Americans say they favor raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. But there is a deep partisan divide in views of this proposed policy – a version of which recently passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, though it is unlikely to be taken up by the GOP-controlled Senate.
Two-thirds of Americans (67%) support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including 41% who say they strongly favor such an increase, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this spring.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are largely united in backing a $15 an hour federal minimum wage: 86% favor this, including nearly six-in-ten (59%) who say they strongly support it.
Republican opinion on this issue is more divided, but a majority of Republicans and Republican leaners – 57% – oppose raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, including nearly three-in-ten (29%) who say they are strongly against it.
All told, nearly half of young adults (46%) are what the Center’s report defines as “low trusters” – people who, compared with other Americans, are more likely to see others as selfish, exploitative and untrustworthy, rather than helpful, fair and trustworthy. Older Americans are less likely to be low trusters. For example, just 19% of adults ages 65 and older fall into this category, according to the survey, which was conducted in late 2018 among 10,618 U.S. adults. (You can read more here about how the study grouped Americans into low, medium and high trust categories.)
Compared with other Americans, U.S. Jews have relatively high levels of religious knowledge – including about non-Jewish religions like Christianity, Islam and Sikhism. But most non-Jewish Americans are unable to answer some basic factual questions about Jewish practices, including about the Jewish Sabbath and New Year.
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are largely united in backing a $15 an hour federal minimum wage: 86% favor this, including nearly six-in-ten (59%) who say they strongly support it.