Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
It may surprise anyone who has been following the charges of racism that have flared up during the debate over President Obama’s health care proposals, but the American public doesn’t see race as the source of the strongest social conflict in the country today.
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.
While most Americans approve of laws that say treatment can be stopped if that’s what a terminally ill patient desires, they are split on what they would do personally in that situation.
Women now make up almost half of the U.S. labor force, up from 38% in 1970. The public approves of this trend, but the change has come with a cost for many women — particularly working mothers of young children, who feel the tug of family responsibility much more acutely than do working fathers.
While most Americans approve of laws that say treatment can be stopped if that’s what a terminally ill patient desires, they are split on what they would do personally in that situation. Only 27% have put into writing their own wishes regarding end-of-life care.
They have different values, beliefs and lifestyles, but young and old today are disagreeing without being disagreeable. Both also share a fondness for Woodstock-era rock and roll.
If a latter-day Ponce de Leon were to search for a modern fountain of youth, he’d do well to explore America’s West. There he’d find the highest concentration of older adults in the United States who don’t think of themselves as old.
A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this summer found that 79% of the public says there is a generation gap, defined in the question as “a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today.” That’s nearly 20 percentage points higher than in 1979 when the same question was […]
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.
Changing attitudes toward work help explain the changing demographic profile of the American work force. With a college degree increasingly seen as a necessity for the good life, many young people ages 16 to 24 report they are staying out of the labor force to concentrate full time on their education. At the other end […]
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