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.
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.
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.
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. […]
About one out of five (19%) of the nation’s households owed student debt in 2010, more than double the share two decades earlier and a significant rise from the 15% that owed such debt in 2007. A record 40% of all households headed by someone younger than age 35 owed student debt in 2010.
Of the 13 recessions that the American public has endured since the Great Depression of 1929-33, none has presented a more punishing combination of length, breadth and depth than this one.
From the kitchen to the laundry room to the home entertainment center, Americans are paring down the list of familiar household appliances they say they can’t live without.
Most Americans say they’re not saving as much as they should — but they’re apparently not worried enough to do much about it.
As Americans navigate increasingly crowded lives, the number of things they say they can’t live without has multiplied in the past decade.
In the nearly 100 years that Americans have been driving cars, the inflation-adjusted price of gasoline has drifted steadily downward, save for two sharp spikes up.
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