Is College Worth It?
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Americans have mixed views on the importance of having a degree. 47% say the cost is worth it only if someone doesn’t have to take out loans.
Most U.S. young adults are at least mostly financially independent and happy with their parents’ involvement in their lives. Parent-child relationships are mostly strong.
Roughly one-in-five workers say they are very or somewhat likely to look for a new job in the next six months, but only about a third of these workers think it would be easy to find one.
About six-in-ten U.S. adults say there’s too much economic inequality in the country these days, and among that group, most say addressing it requires significant changes to the country’s economic system, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
Homeownership in America stands at its lowest level in at least 20 years. The decline has been more pronounced among households headed by young adults, blacks and those in the lower income tier.
The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee.
After more than four decades of serving as the nation’s economic majority, the U.S. middle class is now matched in size by those in the economic tiers above and below it.
In 2012, a record 69% of the nation’s new college graduates had taken out student loans to finance their education. Graduates from more affluent families are much more likely to borrow today than 20 years ago.
During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau […]
After running up record debt-to-income ratios during the bubble economy of the 2000s, young adults shed substantially more debt than older adults did during the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath—mainly by virtue of owning fewer houses and cars, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve Board and other government data. […]
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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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