Article archive / January 1, 2015
Originally published: . Volume 6, No. 1. Source pages: 3.
Pew Research is a center for research on a wide range of topics aimed to help key stakeholders in society understand and solve the world’s most challenging problems. Pew listed a number of what researchers considered “striking findings for 2014.” Below is a list of some of the top issues from Pew and links to their reports.
1. “Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive – than at any point in the last two decades: 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat; and, conversely, 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.”
2. The gap between how much young adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher earn, and those with no degree is the largest in the modern era. This is even with huge levels of student debt and also high youth unemployment.
3. The percent of American adults who have never been married is at an all time high. At the same time, marriage rates are continuing to drop. “In 2012, one-in-five adults ages 25 and older had never been married,” noted Pew researchers. And, “Men are more likely than women to have never been married. And this gender gap has widened since 1960.”
4. “Nearly three-quarters (72%) of the public thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up from 52% who said so in 2002;” and most say they believe that the influence of religion is waning, and also see this as unfortunate and a bad situation. A growing number report that “religion should play a role in politics.”
5. While the Great Recession was hard on all US families, and housing and other assets have become to recover some of their value, this recovery is not a uniform effect. “… wealth inequality has widened along racial and ethnic lines. The median wealth of white households was 13 times the wealth of black households and 10 times that of Hispanic households in 2013, compared with eight and nine times the wealth in 2010, respectively,” says Pew.
6. The public is concerned about privacy issues. Public policy debates, especially after major hacking incidents and also high tech products that track citizens and consumer activity have fueled concerns. “ — 91% of Americans agree or strongly agree that consumers have lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by private companies.”
7. According to Pew, a majority of Americans are ready to pitch the “war on drugs: 67% say the government should focus more on providing treatment for those who use illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine, while just 26% think the government’s focus should be on prosecuting drug users,” say the Pew researchers.
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