Older Americans Adopt E-Books

Older Americans are strangely resistant to the allure of the Internet. They have been slow to go online and reluctant to buy smartphones. E-books may be different. Among book readers aged 65 or older, a substantial 20 percent read an e-book in the past year, according to a Pew survey. This is only 11 percentage points less than the 31 percent of 18-to-29-year-old book readers who read an e-book. The e-book generation gap is tiny compared with these technology gaps, all reported by Pew...

• 43 percentage point gap in using the Internet: 18-to-29 (95%); 65-plus (52%).
• 55 percentage point gap in smartphone ownership: 18-to-29 (66%); 65-plus (11%).
• 64 percentage point gap in accessing the Internet on a phone: 18-to-29 (77%); 65-plus (13%).

Source: Pew Research Center, E-Book Reading Jumps; Print Book Reading Declines

Can You Hear Me Now?

Sixteen percent of Americans aged 18 or older have trouble hearing when not using a hearing aid or other listening device. Here is the percentage with hearing trouble by age...

Aged 18 to 44: 6%
Aged 45 to 64: 19%
Aged 65 to 74: 30%
Aged 75-plus: 47%

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults: National Health Interview Survey, 2011

Household Income Stable in November 2012

Median household income did not change between October and November 2012, according to the latest monthly update from Sentier Research. The November median of $51,310 was $176 greater than the October median, a change that was not statistically significant.

Median household income in November 2012 was 4.4 percent lower than the median in June 2009, the end of the Great Recession. It was 6.9 percent lower than the median in December 2007, the start of the Great Recession. It was 7.8 percent lower than the median in January 2000. The Household Income Index for November 2012 was 92.1 (January 2000 = 100.0). 

For details on monthly changes in household income since January 2000, a spreadsheet is available from Sentier's web site for $25.00.

Source: Sentier Research, Trends in Household Income: November 2012

Marital Status of Same-Sex Couples

Same-sex couples are increasingly likely to identify their household relationship as married rather than unmarried partner, according to the Census Bureau. Among the nation's 605,000 same-sex couples, 28 percent reported their relationship as spouse, according to the 2011 American Community Survey--greater than the number of legally married same-sex couples.

This Is Not Your Father's Earning Power

Median income of men who work full-time, by age (in 2011 dollars)...

	2011	1981	change
Total	$50,316	$51,204	-1.7%
15-24	$24,423	$30,705	-20.5%
25-34	$41,433	$47,475	-12.7%
35-44	$51,926	$57,826	-10.2%
45-54	$56,675	$59,627	-5.0%
55-64	$60,388	$56,947	6.0%

Source: Census Bureau, Current Population Survey

Health Care Ratings Depend on Age

How do Americans feel about their health care? According to a recent Gallup survey, 67 percent of the public rates their health care coverage as good to excellent and 82 percent rate the quality of the health care they receive as good to excellent.

These are meaningless numbers. Health care coverage in the United States ranges from universal national health insurance for people aged 65 or older to no health insurance for more than 20 percent of people aged 18 to 44 and minimal coverage for many others. Because age determines the health care experience, attitudes toward health care must be analyzed by age to produce meaningful data.

The federal government's Medical Expenditure Panel Survey results show how much of a difference age makes in attitudes toward health care. Fully 64 percent of people aged 65 or older give the quality of the health care they receive the highest rating (9 or 10 on a scale of 0 to 10). In contrast, only 44 percent of people aged 18 to 44 give their health care the highest rating. The figure drops to 39 percent among people under age 65 who do not have health insurance.

Showrooming

Percent of Americans who have visited a brick-and-mortar store to examine a product before buying it elsewhere online: 43%.

Source: Harris Interactive survey

The Midnight Hour

Percentage of Americans who are asleep at midnight: 82.6%.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, American Time Use Survey

The Gift Problem

Americans spend much less on gifts than they once did. In 2011, the average household spent $1,037 on gifts for people in other households, according to the Consumer Expenditure Survey. This is much less than the $1,415 spent on gifts in 2000. The average household cut its spending on gifts for people in other households by 27 percent between 2000 and 2011, after adjusting for inflation. What happened?

One reason for the steep decline in spending on gifts is that there is less to give. The Internet has deleted a range of physical objects from the pantheon of traditional gifts: books, CDs, DVDs, video games--a growing percentage of the population no longer welcomes these physical gifts, preferring downloads instead. It seems the only option left for modern gift givers is Amazon and iTunes gift certificates. If you're grappling with the Gift Problem, the list below might help. These are the ten categories of gifts for people in other households on which the average household spends the most... 

1. Clothing for females

2. Clothing for males

3. Shoes

4. Toys

5. Clothing for infants

6. Stationary and gift wrap

7. Jewelry

8. Household decorative items

9. Wine

10. Cosmetics, perfume, and bath products

Note that books, CDs, DVDs, and video games appear nowhere on the list.

Hunting, Fishing, and Feeding Birds

Every five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sponsors a survey to determine how many Americans hunt, fish, or watch wildlife.

According to the latest survey results, 14 million Americans hunt (6 percent of the population aged 16 or older), 33 million fish (14 percent of the population), and 72 million watch wildlife (30 percent of the population). Feeding birds is the single most popular wildlife-associated recreational activity, with 53 million Americans participating.

Source: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation

State Populations: Five Year Trend

The population of the United States grew 4.2 percent during the five years between 2007 (before the start of the Great Recession) and 2012--increasing from 301 million to 314 million. These were the ten fastest growing states during those five years and the percent increase in their population...

1. District of Columbia, 10.1%
2. Utah, 9.9%
3. Texas, 9.3%
4. Colorado, 8.0%
5. Wyoming, 7.8%
6. Alaska, 7.5%
7. North Dakota, 7.2%
8. North Carolina, 7.0%
9. Washington, 6.7%
10. South Carolina, 6.3%

How does state population growth between 2007 and 2012 compare with state growth in the previous five years, from 2002 to 2007?

• Four states appear on the top-ten list in both time periods: Utah, Texas, North Carolina, and South Carolina. All four states grew more slowly in the 2007-2012 time period than in the previous five years.
• The fastest growing "state" in the most recent five-year time period was one of the slowest growing in the previous five years. The District of Columbia was the fifth slowest growing state between 2002 and 2007, its population increasing by only 0.2 percent. 
• Nevada grew the fastest in the earlier five-year time period, with a 20 percent increase in population. In comparison, Nevada's population grew by a smaller 6 percent between 2007 and 2012 and the state ranked 13th in growth. 
• Two states lost population between 2007 and 2012: Rhode Island (-0.7%) and Michigan (-1.2%). Four states lost population in the previous five-year time period: New York, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Louisiana.

Bottom line: There was much less variation in state population growth between 2007 and 2012 than in the previous five years. The gap between the fastest growing and fastest declining states in the 2002-2007 time period was 22 percentage points (Nevada, up 20 percent; Louisiana, down 2 percent). The gap shrank to just 11 percentage points in the 2007-2012 time period (District of Columbia, up 10 percent; Michigan, down 1 percent). Less variation in state growth is evidence of an economy struggling to recover from the Great Recession. Americans are hunkered down.

Source: Census Bureau, Population Estimates

North Dakota?

Yes, North Dakota is the nation's fastest growing state, according to the Census Bureau's latest state population estimates. With an increase of 2.17 percent between July 2011 and July 2012, North Dakota's population ranked first in growth followed by Washington, D.C., Texas, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada.

Source: Census Bureau, Population Estimates, State Totals: Vintage 2012

Career Job a Myth

The idea that our fathers and grandfathers had long-term careers with one employer is mostly a myth, says the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Median job tenure (length of time with current employer) for men in their prime working years--aged 25 to 64--was never all that high and is not much different today than it was in the past.

Among men aged 55 to 64--the age group most likely to have been with their current employer for the longest period of time--median job tenure was just 9.3 years in 1951, climbed to a peak of 15.3 years in 1983, fell to 9.5 years in 2006, and stood at 10.7 years in 2012. "Career jobs never existed for most workers and have continued not to exist for most workers," EBRI concludes.

Source: Employee Benefit Research Institute, Employee Tenure Trends, 1983-2012

Latest Numbers on Cell-Phone-Only Households

Thirty-four percent of adults and 41 percent of children lived in a cell-phone-only household as of January-June 2012, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The NCHS has been reporting on the telephone status of Americans every six months since 2008.

Percentage of adults who live in a cell-phone-only household by age...
Aged 18 to 24: 49.5%
Aged 25 to 29: 60.1%
Aged 30 to 34: 55.1%
Aged 35 to 44: 39.1%
Aged 45 to 64: 25.8%
Aged 65 or older: 10.5%

Note that 18-to-24-year-olds are less likely than 25-to-34-year-olds to live in a cell-phone-only household because many live with their parents or are college students in dorms and counted as living with their parents.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Wireless Substitution: Early Release of Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, January-June 2012

Entitled Americans

The 55 percent majority of Americans aged 18 or older have ever received government entitlements, according to Pew Research Center. Here is the percentage by age...

Aged 18 to 29: 33%

Aged 30 to 49: 45%

Aged 50 to 64: 59%

Aged 65 or older: 97%

Note: Government entitlements are defined as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, unemployment benefits, or food stamps.

Source: Pew Research Center, A Bipartisan Nation of Beneficiaries

End Times

Percentage of Americans who believe the severity of recent natural disasters is evidence of what the Bible calls the end times: 36%

Source: Public Religion Research Institute, Americans More Likely to Attribute Increasingly Severe Weather to Climate Change, Not End Times

Degrees of Stress

Percentage of adults who have experienced serious psychological distress in the past 30 days, ranked from most to least...

5.0 percent: women aged 45 to 64
3.4 percent: women aged 18 to 44
3.3 percent: men aged 45 to 64
2.6 percent: women aged 65 or older
1.8 percent: men aged 18 to 44
0.9 percent: men aged 65 or older

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Serious Psychological Distress, Early Release of Selected Estimates Based on Data from the January-Juen 2012 National Health Interview Survey

Guns Are a Rural Thing

The fact is, guns are a rural thing, a relic of our past and a consequence of our wide open spaces. This is a problem because the United States is now an urban nation, with densely packed concentrations of people. Fully 81 percent of Americans live in urban areas. Most urban residents--whether in central cities or suburbs--think gun control is more important than gun rights, according to a Pew Research Center survey. This includes the 57 percent majority of central city residents and 50 percent of suburban residents. Only 38 percent of the residents of central cities and 46 percent of suburban residents think gun rights should trump gun control.

But rural America disagrees, and rural attitudes toward guns and gun control have prevailed. Among the 19 percent of Americans who live in rural areas, only 33 percent think it is more important to control guns and nearly two out of three--63 percent--think it is more important to protect their right to own a gun. And they do own guns: 65 percent of rural residents have a gun in their home versus 30 percent of suburban and 22 percent of central city residents, according to the 2001 National Gun Policy Survey of the National Opinion Research Center.

So how come the rural fringe controls the nation's gun laws? One explanation is that our political system grants disproportionate power to the most sparsely populated (rural) states. Each state is allotted two senators regardless of population size. So, for example, a resident of the most rural state (Maine) has 28 times the political power in the Senate as a resident of the most urban state (California). This may be why rural America gets to call the shots in the gun control debate.

What Americans Think about Gun Control

American "attitudes" toward gun control depend on how the question is asked...

Gallup
"Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?"
Should not be a law: 73%
Should be a law: 26%

Pew Research Center
"Is it more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns or to control gun ownership?"
More important to protect right of Americans to own guns: 46%
More important to control gun ownership: 47%

General Social Survey
"Would you favor or oppose a law which would require a person to obtain a police permit before he or she could buy a gun?"
Oppose a law: 26%
Favor a law: 74%

Travel Spending, 2005 to 2011

Because of the Great Recession and slow economic recovery, Americans have been less likely to travel and consequently are spending less on it. A new analysis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows how much they've cut.

Overall, 29 percent of households spent on travel in 2011, down from 32 percent in 2005. This decline may seem trivial, but as the BLS notes it represents a 10 percent decline in the number of traveling households. Every travel subcategory from airline fares to lodging, restaurant meals, and gasoline on trips, experienced a decline in household spending. The average household spent $1,372 on travel in 2011, down from $1,489 in 2005 after adjusting for inflation. Among the 29 percent of households that spent on travel in 2011, the average amount spent was $4,700.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Travel Expenditures, 2005-2011: Spending Slows during Recent Recession