The United States at 250: How the Country Has Changed in the Past 50 Years
Ahead of the nation’s birthday, Pew Research Center identified some prominent trends across key areas of American life: demographics, work, family and economics.
Economy & Work
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High-income Americans pay most income taxes, but enough to be ‘fair’?
By design, wealthier Americans pay most of the nation’s total individual income taxes.
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Cost-of-living disparities within states complicate minimum-wage debate
The cost of living can vary widely not just from state to state but within individual states, which can make setting an appropriate minimum wage more difficult.
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Who relies on public transit in the U.S.
America’s love affair with the car is well-documented, but many U.S. adults also rely on a bus, train or subway to get around. One-in-ten Americans (11%) say they take public transportation on a daily or weekly basis, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2015, but who is taking public transit […]
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Global tech companies see India’s vast offline population as untapped market
Only about a fifth of India’s roughly 1.2 billion people are online, according to a recent Pew Research Center report, and the world’s biggest technology companies are clamoring for this large, untapped user base. Facebook recently tried (and failed) to implement its “Free Basics” internet program, and Google is also vying for the vast Indian […]
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The biggest U.S. tax breaks
The hundreds of exemptions, deductions and other breaks embedded in the tax code will cost the federal government more than $1.3 trillion this fiscal year.
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Americans’ views of job availability among most positive in last 15 years
Americans are now more positive about the job opportunities available to them than they have been since the economic meltdown, when views of the job market took a nosedive.
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Incentives – and pressures – for U.S. workers in a ‘knowledge economy’
As automation looms and more and more jobs are being shaped to accommodate the tech-saturated “knowledge economy,” 63% of full- and part-time workers say they have taken steps in the past 12 months to upgrade their skills and knowledge. That is one of several key findings from a Pew Research Center survey conducted last fall […]
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5 facts about U.S. relations with Cuba
The renewal of diplomatic and economic ties has drawn widespread support in the U.S., but significant partisan differences on the future of the relationship between the two countries remain.
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Public Predictions for the Future of Workforce Automation
A majority of Americans predict that within 50 years, robots and computers will do much of the work currently done by humans, but few expect their own jobs to experience substantial impacts.
