Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Senior Writer/Editor
Drew DeSilver is a senior writer at Pew Research Center.
Using documents obtained from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, The Washington Post has published the first-ever detailed look at the U.S. government’s intelligence spending — the “black budget,” so called because, though the overall spending figure has been made public since 2007, the specifics have not. For its combination of newsworthiness, clear and efficient presentation […]
Although household-income growth for African-Americans has outpaced that of whites since the 1960s, those gains haven’t led to any narrowing of the wealth gap between the races.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech 50 years ago today on Washington D.C.’s National Mall and Memorial Parks has become one of the most famous, and quoted, pieces of oratory in U.S. history (though that wasn’t apparent to everyone at the time). But how well have the aspirations King so memorably expressed been realized? We ran […]
Most blacks, whites and Hispanics say they get along reasonably well with each other — and at modestly higher levels than in the recent past.
The Chart of the Week illustrates that whites continue to be overrepresented among high-earning local government jobs, long a source for upward social mobility, but the workforces have become more diversified over the past five decades.
Much has changed for African-Americans since the 1963 March on Washington (which, recall, was a march for “Jobs and Freedom”), but one thing hasn’t: The unemployment rate among blacks is still about double that among whites, as it has been for most of the past six decades.
New economic figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed an increase in public spending among developed countries during the global financial crisis, but a survey of European nations indicated publics were now looking to ratchet it down.
Participation in the federal food stamp program soared following the 2008-09 financial crisis. Our chart of the week, from the Wall Street Journal, shows how the participation rate differed by state.
Although China’s trade ties with and economic influence on its Asian and Pacific Rim neighbors are greater than ever, that’s doesn’t automatically translate into warmer feelings toward the People’s Republic among publics in the region.
About eight-in-ten Americans think rising prices are a “very” or “moderately” big problem.
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