Income, Wealth & Poverty

A political, economic and demographic divide has opened up between France and Germany. The two countries, which have for decades been the driving force behind European integration, increasingly see the world through different lenses. This new evidence of a dramatic divergence of public opinion raises new questions about prospects for the European Project.

With the stock market hitting new highs and home prices marking their strongest gains since before the bubble burst, it’s starting to feel like a real economic recovery. But which is the better investment over time? That depends largely on your definition of “long term.” As the accompanying charts show, since the formal end of the […]

Optimism in an Era of Growing Inequality and Economic Difficulty Despite an extended period of economic difficulty, Pew Research Center pollsters Andrew Kohut and Michael Dimock show that Americans’ core values and beliefs about economic opportunity, and the nation’s economic outlook, remain largely optimistic and unchanged. There is also little evidence that economic class is […]

Tuesday’s report on the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index showed a 9.3% increase between February 2012 and February 2013 — the biggest year-over-year increase in the 20-city composite index since before the housing bubble burst. Is housing, at long last, on the road to recovery? Many Americans already think so. A Pew Research survey in March found that 52% of people […]

During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau […]

Pew Internet Project Director Lee Rainie presented findings about the state of digital differences at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute’s Annual Conference on Capitol Hill.

After running up record debt-to-income ratios during the bubble economy of the 2000s, young adults shed substantially more debt than older adults did during the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath—mainly by virtue of owning fewer houses and cars, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve Board and other government data. […]

*Visit the most recent data. This statistical profile of the Latino population is based on Hispanic Trends Project tabulations of the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey (ACS). Users should exercise caution when comparing the 2011 estimates with estimates for previous years. Population estimates in the 2011 ACS are based on the latest information from […]

*Visit the most recent data. This statistical profile of the foreign-born population is based on Hispanic Trends Project tabulations of the Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey (ACS). Users should exercise caution when comparing the 2011 estimates with estimates for previous years. Population estimates in the 2011 ACS are based on the latest information from […]