Economic Conditions

Overview Less than five months before Election Day, voters are not as engaged with the presidential campaign as they were at this point four years ago, when interest in the campaign reached record levels. But voter engagement today generally equals or surpasses levels from the four campaigns prior to 2008, indicating that 2012 could be […]

The issue of the debt and the deficit – and what to do about it – has paralyzed Washington lawmakers. But when it comes to measures for reducing the deficit on which they might reach common ground, they will get little help in building support for an agreement by turning to public opinion. In my […]

Overview The public continued to track news about the economy and the presidential election, while paying less attention to another important political story – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s victory in a hard-fought recall election. The latest weekly News Interest Index, conducted June 7-10 among 1,000 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & […]

Overview The public’s perceptions of economic news have taken a turn for the worse. And that could be bad news for Barack Obama, who held a lead over Mitt Romney in polling conducted mostly before last week’s disappointing jobs report and stock market slide. Currently 37% say they are hearing mostly bad news about the […]

Overview As Americans head to the polls this November, their values and basic beliefs are more polarized along partisan lines than at any point in the past 25 years. Unlike in 1987, when this series of surveys began, the values gap between Republicans and Democrats is now greater than gender, age, race or class divides. […]

About half of Americans say the price of gasoline has gone down over the past month. But West Coast residents are much more likely to see gasoline prices going up, which is consistent with a rise in prices at the pump in that part of the country. In total, 51% of the public says that […]

As the G-8 leaders prepare to meet at Camp David on Friday, the dominant topic of conversation will be the European debt crisis. Yet it is a crisis that has attracted minimal interest or concern among the U.S. public, despite warnings from economists that Europe’s problems may threaten this country’s fragile recovery. Last week was […]

Overview Americans followed news about the nation’s economy more closely than any other news last week amid new signs the pace of the recovery has slowed. A quarter of the public (25%) says their top story was reports about the condition of the U.S. economy, while 18% say they followed news about the 2012 presidential […]

At the Population Association of America’s annual conference in San Francisco this week, papers on the recession’s impact on families, wealth, children, young adults, older Americans and other realms of life will be presented in at least 10 of the 200-plus sessions. Much of the research is preliminary, but it raises intriguing questions. One paper tries to assess whether the poor economy has affected divorce rates.

Hispanics and Asians are gaining jobs at a faster rate in the economic recovery than are blacks and whites, immigrants are outpacing the native born, and men are faring better than women.