Balancing work and family obligations is a challenge for many parents, but remote learning and the closure of many child care centers have put added stress on them in the COVID-19 pandemic, especially on parents without the support of a partner at home.
While previous research on the labor market shows that the pandemic has similarly affected mothers and fathers overall from September 2019 to September 2020, a new Pew Research Center analysis finds that the share of unpartnered mothers who are employed and at work has fallen more precipitously than among other parents.
In September 2020, six months since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, 67.4% of unpartnered mothers with children younger than 18 at home were working – employed and on the job – compared with 76.1% in September 2019. This 9 percentage point drop is the largest among all groups of parents, partnered or not. Unpartnered fathers experienced a less severe decrease (4 points), about the same as the drop seen by partnered mothers and fathers (about 5 points each).
President Donald Trump signs a pardon for Alice Johnson, who was serving a life sentence on drug-related charges, on Aug. 28, 2020, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)
As he enters the home stretch of his White House tenure, Donald Trump has used his clemency power less often than any president in modern history, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice. Trump’s sparse use of pardons, commutations and other forms of official leniency stands in sharp contrast to his predecessor, Barack Obama, who used the clemency power more frequently than any chief executive since Harry Truman.
As of Nov. 23, Trump had granted clemency 44 times, including 28 pardons and 16 commutations. That’s the lowest total of any president since at least William McKinley, who served at the turn of the 20th century. Obama, by comparison, granted clemency 1,927 times during his eight-year tenure, including 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations. The only modern president who granted clemency almost as infrequently as Trump is George H.W. Bush, who granted 77 pardons and commutations in his single term.
Pope Francis greets cardinals after Easter Mass. (Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images)
Unless his reign is short, a Roman Catholic pontiff will appoint most of the men who vote for his successor. But Pope Francis’ additions to the College of Cardinals since his election in 2013 also have served another purpose – tilting the leadership structure of the Roman Catholic Church away from its historic European base and toward developing nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The pope recently announced that he will appoint nine new voting cardinals (in addition to four other cardinals who are over 80 and therefore ineligible to vote). After this latest group is elevated at a Nov. 28 ceremony in Vatican City, the College of Cardinals will have 128 voting members, 42% of whom are European, down from 52% in 2013.
From the first day of his presidency to his campaign for reelection, Donald Trump has sounded the alarm about crime in the United States. Trump vowed to end “American carnage” in his inaugural address in 2017. This year, he ran for reelection on a platform of “law and order.”
As Trump’s presidency draws to a close, here is a look at what we know – and don’t know – about crime in the U.S., based on a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the federal government and other sources.
As the United States struggles with a surge in COVID-19 cases and ongoing disputes about the Nov. 3 election, majorities of voters continue to say they feel “fearful” and “angry” about the state of the country.
However, the share who say they feel angry has declined since June, while more voters now say they feel “hopeful” than did so then, according to a new national survey by Pew Research Center.
Today, 65% of voters say they are fearful about the state of the country, little changed since June. A smaller majority (57%) say they feel angry, down from 73% five months ago.
At the same time, a 56% majority of voters now say they feel hopeful about the state of the U.S., up from 47% in June. And while only about a quarter of voters (24%) say they feel “proud” about the country, that is 8 percentage points higher than five months ago.
Many world leaders were quick to offer congratulatory messages to President-elect Joe Biden after his victory in this month’s U.S. presidential election. They included Germany’s Angela Merkel, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and others who have had tense relations with President Donald Trump. Citing Biden’s commitment to rejoining the Paris climate accord, France’s Emmanuel Macron suggested it is now possible to “make our planet great again.”
The French leader’s sentiments are probably shared by many ordinary citizens around the world. In international surveys conducted by Pew Research Center over the past few years, Trump has generally received lower ratings than either of his two predecessors – Barack Obama and George W. Bush – with relatively few people approving of his handling of international affairs.
Students in masks pass the Euro sculpture in downtown Frankfurt, Germany, in March 2020. Restrictions had taken effect the week before to stem the spread of the coronavirus. (Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)
Coronavirus cases are rising quickly in many parts of the world, and in October, the European Union surpassed the United States in average daily coronavirus cases per million people.
Prior to the recent surge, however, new case rates across the EU were much flatter than in the U.S., and most people in eight EU countries thought their own country – and the bloc as a whole – had done a good job dealing with the pandemic, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted between June 10 and Aug. 3, 2020. Here’s a closer look at findings from the survey, as well as public health and economic data about how the EU has been faring during the pandemic.
Here are five facts about how much Americans have heard about the QAnon conspiracy theories and their views about them, based on Pew Research Center surveys and analysis.
(Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)
Taken in the aggregate, preelection polls in the United States pointed to the strong likelihood that Democrat Joe Biden would pick up several states that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 and, in the process, win a popular and electoral vote majority over Republican President Donald Trump. That indeed came to pass. But the election was much closer than polls suggested in several battleground states (e.g., Wisconsin) and more decisive for Trump elsewhere (e.g., Ohio). Democrats also were disappointed at failing to pick up outright control of the U.S. Senate – though it remains a possibility – and at losing seats in the U.S. House and several state legislatures.
Many who follow public opinion polls are understandably asking how these outcomes could happen, especially after the fairly aggressive steps the polling community took to understand and address problems that surfaced in 2016. We are asking ourselves the same thing. In this post, we’ll take a preliminary shot at answering that question, characterizing the nature and scope of the 2020 polling errors and suggesting some possible causes. We’ll also consider what this year’s errors might mean for issue-focused surveys, though it will be many months before the industry will be able to collect all the data necessary to come to any solid conclusions.
In his first speech as president-elect, Joe Biden made clear his intention to bridge the deep and bitter divisions in American society. He pledged to look beyond red and blue and to discard the harsh rhetoric that characterizes our political debates.
It will be a difficult struggle. Americans have rarely been as polarized as they are today.
