By roughly two-to-one (61% to 31%) most Americans offer a favorable assessment of their local government. In comparison, just 33% have a favorable view of the federal government.
Three-in-ten (30%) female veterans say they have served in a combat or war zone since 9/11; that compares to 57% of male veterans say they have done so.
An estimated 214 million people worldwide reside in a country other than the one where they were born. The U.S. is home to more migrants than any other country — 42.8 million.
More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) view the increase in intermarriage as a societal change for the better, while about one-in-ten (11%) hold the opposite view. The rest of the public says it doesn’t make a difference.
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. Births fell from a record high of 4,316,233 in 2007 to an estimated 4,007,000 in 2010.
Large numbers of Americans enacted their own anti-poverty program in the depths of the Great Recession: 51.4 million Americans lived with relatives in 2009, an increase over the 46.5 million who did so in 2007.
The number and share of Americans living in multi-generational households rose for all age groups from 2007 to 2009, but the sharpest growth was for adults ages 25 to 34. Their numbers increased from 7.4 million to 8.7 million during that period.