Recessions & Recoveries

More than six-in-ten Americans have cut back on household spending since the recession began.

Overview There is broad public agreement that past government policies intended to address the financial crisis and recession have not worked. At the same time, there is very little agreement about what the government should do now to deal with the nation’s biggest economic concern – the job situation. None of the options currently under […]

The recession-era boom in the size of freshman classes at four-year colleges, community colleges and trade schools has been driven largely by a sharp increase in minority student enrollment.

After rising to their highest levels in two decades, birth rates in the U.S. declined a bit in 2008, a result that appears to be linked to the recession.

There is a strong association between the magnitude of fertility change in 2008 across states and key economic indicators including changes in per capita income, housing prices and share of the working-age population that is employed across states.

The multi-generational American family household is staging a comeback -- driven in part by the job losses and home foreclosures of recent years, but more so by demographic changes that have been gathering steam for decades.

Instead of traveling across country or across town for Thanksgiving this year, many grown sons and daughters will be coming to dinner from their old bedroom down the hall, which now doubles as their recession-era refuge.

The share of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the United States hit an all-time high in October 2008, driven by a recession-era surge in enrollments at community colleges.

Three-in-four Americans who go online for economic reasons also use the internet to take their minds off the recession.