Rural Americans are more likely than people in urban and suburban areas to say access to good doctors and hospitals is a major problem in their community. One possible factor in this view is that getting to a hospital is a longer trip – both in distance and time – for people in rural areas than for those in suburbs and cities.
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Americans are becoming less reliant on physical currency. Roughly three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) say they make no purchases using cash during a typical week, up from 24% in 2015. High-income adults are the most likely to say this.
Pew Research Center takes the pulse of Americans and people around the world on a host of issues every year. We explore public opinion on topics ranging from foreign policy to cyberbullying, as well as demographic trends, such as the emergence of the post-Millennial generation and changes in the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. Here are 18 of this year’s standout findings, taken from our analyses over the past year.
1. Post-Millennials – today’s 6- to 21-year-olds, also known as Generation Z – are on track to be the most racially and ethnically diverse generation yet. A bare majority of post-Millennials are non-Hispanic white (52%), while a quarter are Hispanic. And while most post-Millennials are still pursuing their K-12 education, the oldest members of this generation are enrolling in college at a significantly higher rate than Millennials were at a comparable age.
The American public’s leading long-range foreign policy goals for the United States are focused on security, including economic security. About seven-in-ten (72%) say that taking measures to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks should be a top priority for the country, while about as many (71%) say the same about protecting the jobs of American workers.
Two-thirds (66%) say preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) should be a top long-range priority for the United States.
With only a handful of exceptions, including stopping the spread of WMD, there are sizable differences between Republicans and Democrats on 26 foreign policy goals.
Close to half of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 say they are on the internet “almost constantly,” and more than nine-in-ten are social media users. These highly plugged-in youth, however, are just as likely as their less-connected peers to socialize regularly with their friends in person. In fact, when taking into account both online and offline interactions, highly connected teens report more contact with their friends compared with other teens.
Americans continue to prefer watching the news rather than reading or listening to it, and their viewing loyalties have yet to migrate fully to the web. Instead, the majority of U.S. adults who prefer to watch the news opt for television as their primary news platform, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
In addition to exploring the preferred format for news consumption, the study also measured which platform people preferred most for their news: print, television, the internet or radio. Just over four-in-ten U.S. adults (44%) prefer TV, compared with about a third (34%) who prefer the web, 14% who prefer radio and 7% who prefer print. The only meaningful shifts since 2016 are a small increase in online and decrease in print news consumption.
There were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2016, representing 3.3% of the total U.S. population that year. The 2016 unauthorized immigrant total is a 13% decline from the peak of 12.2 million in 2007, when this group was 4% of the U.S. population.
The number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants declined since 2007, but the total from other nations changed little. Mexicans made up half of all unauthorized immigrants in 2016, according to Pew Research Center’s estimate, compared with 57% in 2007. Their numbers (and share of the total) have been declining in recent years: There were 5.4 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2016, down from 6.9 million in 2007.
Meanwhile, the total from other nations, 5.2 million in 2016, remained about the same as in 2007, when it was 5.3 million. The number of unauthorized immigrants has grown since 2007 only from one birth region: Central America, from 1.5 million that year to nearly 1.9 million in 2016. This growth was fueled mainly by immigrants from the Northern Triangle nations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The totals also went down over the 2007-2016 period from South America and the combined region of Europe plus Canada. The remaining regions (the Caribbean, Asia, Middle East-North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world) did not change significantly in that time.
Today, social media use is nearly universal among teens.1 While notable shares say they at times feel overwhelmed by the drama on social media and pressure to construct only positive images of themselves, they simultaneously credit these online platforms with several positive outcomes – including strengthening friendships, exposing them to different viewpoints and helping people their age support causes they care about.
Roughly eight-in-ten teens ages 13 to 17 (81%) say social media makes them feel more connected to what’s going on in their friends’ lives, while around two-thirds say these platforms make them feel as if they have people who will support them through tough times. And by relatively substantial margins, teens tend to associate their social media use with positive rather than negative emotions, such as feeling included rather than excluded (71% vs. 25%) or feeling confident rather than insecure (69% vs. 26%).
Young people also believe social media helps teens become more civically minded and exposes them to greater diversity – either through the people they interact with or the viewpoints they come across. Roughly two-thirds of teens say these sites help people their age interact with individuals from diverse backgrounds, find different points of view or show their support for causes or issues. And they see digital environments as important spaces for youth to connect with their friends and interact with others who share similar interests. For example, 60% of teens say they spend time with their friends online on a daily or nearly daily basis, and 77% say they ever spend time in online groups and forums.
There were 10.7 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2016, down from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007. The total is the lowest since 2004 and is tied to a decline in the number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants.
Algorithms are all around us, utilizing massive stores of data and complex analytics to make decisions with often significant impacts on humans. Despite the growing presence of algorithms in daily life, Americans express broad concerns over the fairness and effectiveness of computer programs making important decisions.
The public is generally positive about the outcome of last week’s midterm elections. Yet most Americans think that neither Democratic congressional leaders nor Donald Trump will be successful in getting their policies passed into law during the next two years.
And after years of growing political divisions in Congress and the nation, the public expects little improvement in relations between Republicans and Democrats in Washington in the coming year. Most expect partisan relations will get worse or stay the same. Just 9% expect that partisan relations will improve.
From the very start of Donald Trump’s presidency, Americans have been divided along partisan lines in their views of him. But partisan divisions in U.S. politics are certainly nothing new.
Our new video puts views of Trump into context by looking at the country’s growing partisan divides over time.
A new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data finds that the “post-Millennial” generation is already the most racially and ethnically diverse generation, as a bare majority of 6- to 21-year-olds (52%) are non-Hispanic whites. And while most are still pursuing their K-12 education, the oldest post-Millennials are enrolling in college at a significantly higher rate than Millennials were at a comparable age.
The changing patterns in educational attainment are driven in part by the shifting origins of young Hispanics. Post-Millennial Hispanics are less likely than Millennial Hispanics to be immigrants – 12% of post-Millennial Hispanics were born outside the U.S., compared with 24% of Millennial Hispanics in 2002.
More broadly, the post-Millennial generation is being shaped by changing immigration patterns. Immigration flows into the U.S. peaked in 2005, when the leading edge of the post-Millennial generation was age 8 or younger. The onset of the Great Recession and the large decline in employment led to fewer immigrants coming to the United States, including immigrant children. As a result, the post-Millennial generation has fewer foreign-born youth among its ranks than the Millennial generation did in 2002 and a significantly higher number who were born in the U.S. to immigrant parents, though this may change depending on future immigration flows.
Other key findings:
Japanese feel better about their economy than at any time in nearly two decades. But the overall mood in Japan remains wary, if not pessimistic. The prevailing view is that average people are worse off than before the Great Recession, while few think the next generation will fare any better. Automation is one reason the future may not be so bright for ordinary people: Majorities of Japanese say growing reliance on robots and computers will lead to joblessness and income inequality. And less than half the public is satisfied with the way democracy is working in Japan, while more than half hold the view that politicians do not care about ordinary people, that they are corrupt and that elections ultimately do not change much.
