Dinner with the Kids

Percentage of parents who have dinner with their child(ren) every day during a typical week, by age of child...

Under age 6: 81%
Aged 6 to 11: 75%
Aged 12 to 17: 58%

Source: Census Bureau, A Child's Day: 2009

The 10 Biggest Losers

Landline phone service has been the single biggest loser of the past decade. In 2010, only 62.5 percent of households paid a landline phone bill during the average quarter, down from 94.4 percent during the average quarter of 2000--a whopping 32 percentage point decline in the percentage of households buying the service. At the other extreme, cell phone service was the biggest gainer during the decade, with the percentage of households spending on cell service during the average quarter climbing by 44 percentage points between 2000 and 2010, to 64.8 percent.

The other top-10 losers of the 2000-to-2010 time period experienced declines ranging from 23 percentage points for film to 10 percentage points for newspaper subscriptions. Here is the list of the 10 products and services with the largest decade-long decline in the percentage of households buying them...

1. Landline phone service
2. Film
3. Photo processing
4. Personal care services
5. Video rentals
6. Women's hosiery
7. Professional dry cleaning
8. CDs, records, and audiotapes
9. Life insurance
10. Newspaper subscriptions

Source: 2000 and 2010 Consumer Expenditure Surveys, unpublished data

CPS Not Counting Most IRA/401(k) Withdrawals

There's something fishy in the Current Population Survey's income data for older Americans, and now we know what it is. The percentage of people aged 65 or older who report receiving income from an IRA or 401(k) is way too low--just 1 percent in 2010! An article in Social Security Bulletin explains why: the CPS does not count IRA/401(k) withdrawals as income unless they occur regularly--such as with an annuity. But most IRA/401(k) withdrawals are irregular and thus not counted. You don't have to be a data junkie to find this omission astounding--especially from the survey that generates the nation's official income statistics.

The Social Security Bulletin article provides a glimpse of the magnitude of the omission by comparing IRA income recorded by the CPS to IRA income reported to the IRS. The difference is eye popping: $6.4 billion (CPS) versus $124.7 billion (IRS). The CPS is missing, from IRAs alone, an average of $2,333 per person aged 60 or older in the United States.

Because a growing share of retirement income is in the form of irregular withdrawals from IRAs and 401(k)s, the researchers conclude: "The major nationally representative surveys of household income must accurately measure annual distributions from retirement accounts in order to provide a complete picture of the economic well-being of the aged and the general US population."

Source: Social Security Administration, Shifting Income Sources of the Aged, Chris E. Anguelov, Howard M. Iams, and Patrick J. Purcell, Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 72, No. 3, 2012

Flying Demographics

Percentage of Americans who have flown on a commercial airliner in the past year by age...
18-29: 60%
30-49: 56%
50-64: 53%
65-plus: 33%

Source: Gallup, Americans' Views of TSA More Positive than Negative

Only 62 Percent?

To say Americans are not active is an understatement. Only 62 percent of adults reported "recent walking" in a 2010 survey, according to the CDC. It defines recent walking as a bout of walking for at least 10 minutes in the past seven days for transportation (to get somewhere) or for leisure (for fun, exercise, or to walk the dog).

As bad this is, it's higher than the 56 percent who reported recent walking in a 2005 survey.

Source: CDC, Vital Signs: Walking among Adults -- United States, 2005 and 2010

A Lost Generation of Journalists?

Percentage of 2011 college graduates with a degree in journalism who...

Read a printed newspaper yesterday: 42%
Read news on a mobile device yesterday: 56%
Think they have the ability to produce content for mobile devices: 11%

Source: University of Georgia, 2011 Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates

Credit Card Trends

The average American now has only one or no credit cards, according to an analysis of Equifax data by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The percentage of the population without a credit card grew from 16 to 24 percent between 2009 and 2011, a trend that occurred in every age group.

Are banks closing these credit card accounts or are consumers shutting them down? To determine the direction of causality, the Fed analysts looked at whether applications for credit had fallen between 2007 and 2011. Answer: yes, especially among consumers with high levels of debt (down 33 percent). But even those with low levels of debt had reduced their credit applications (down 20 percent). "Our analysis shows that consumers have likely played a larger role in the credit decline than banks have," the researchers conclude.

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Americans Cut Their Debt

Watching the Olympics

Seventy-three percent of Americans aged 18 or older are watching the Olympics on television, according to Pew Research Center. There is little variation in television viewing by age, with the proportion watching the Olympics on TV ranging from 66 to 73 percent. Younger adults are much more likely to be watching some of the Olympics online (21 to 22 percent of those under age 50) and on social network sites such as Twitter or Facebook (31 percent of those under age 30).

Source: Pew Research Center, Eight-in-Ten Following Olympics on TV or Digitally

Other Race

"Other race" is the third largest racial group in the United States (behind only white and black), according to 2010 census results. Meant to be a small residual category, the public's confusion over the difference between race (Asian, black, white) and ethnicity (Hispanic) has turned it into one of the biggest racial categories. Who are these people of other race? The vast majority are Hispanics who check "other" in the census race question (because they do not see a Hispanic/Latino category) before moving on to the separate Hispanic origin question.

In taking the 2010 census, the Census Bureau fielded an alternative questionnaire to test a combined race and Hispanic origin question. The results are in, showing that the combined question works much better than separate race and Hispanic origin questions, reducing the other-race category to just 0.2 percent of the population--the residual it was meant to be. In contrast, with separate questions, fully 7.1 percent of the population checked other race. Expect a combined race and Hispanic origin question on the 2020 census.

Pet Ownership is Down

Pet ownership fell slightly over the past five years, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association's 2012 U.S. Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook, to be released this fall. A smaller percentage of households owned dogs or cats in 2011 than in 2006, due in part to belt-tightening during the Great Recession.

The latest survey results show 36.5 percent of households owning dogs (1.6 on average) and 30.4 percent owning cats (2.1 on average) in 2011. The AVMA reports that spending on veterinary care for dogs increased 19 percent between 2006 and 2011, while remaining flat for cats. My analysis of spending trends from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey shows average household spending on veterinary care rising sharply between 2006 and 2009, after adjusting for inflation, then plunging 32 percent between 2009 and 2010.

Polling and Telephone Demographics

Pollsters are struggling to capture the opinions of the cell-phone-only population in their polling for the 2012 presidential election, reports the New York Times. Some are making a valiant attempt to include a representative sample of these potential voters in their survey results--and with good reason. Nearly one-third of the nation's adults now live in a wireless-only household, twice as many as in 2008, according to the federal government.

The demographics of the wireless-only group are strikingly different from the demographics of those with both cell and landline phones. No doubt, their political attitudes are strikingly different too. The wireless-only population has expanded to encompass the majority of adults under age 35, the majority of renters, the majority of the poor, 37 percent of blacks, 43 percent of Hispanics, and 41 percent of students.

Is It Something in Our Water?

A CDC examination of hypertension among Mexican-Americans living in the United States shows the foreign-born are much less likely to have hypertension than those born in the United States. Not only that, but the age-adjusted rate of hypertension has remained steady over the past three decades among foreign-born Mexican-Americans, while it has increased among those born in the United States.

Source: CDC, QuickStats: Prevalence of Hypertension among Mexican-American Adulst Aged 20-74 Years, by Country of Birth -- United States, 1982-84 to 2007-2010

The Leisure Time Paradox

Most Americans would scoff at the notion that they have more leisure time than their parents or grandparents did 40 years ago. But that's what time use studies show. Since 1965, men have gained 5.26 additional hours of leisure time per week. Women have an extra 3.56 hours compared to their counterparts in 1965. How come we don't feel more relaxed?

An elegant examination of trends in leisure time, published in Demography (unfortunately behind a paywall), answers the question: because the quality of leisure time has declined. Simply put, we aren't having as much fun as we once did. (See "Leisure Inequality in the United States: 1965-2003, by Almudena Sevilla, Jose I. Gimenez-Nadal, and Jonathan Gershuny, Demography, August 2012).

The analysis measures the quality of leisure time in three ways: pure leisure--or the amount of leisure time spent only in leisure activities with no accompanying non-leisure secondary activities (such as taking calls from your boss); co-present leisure (a better term might be social leisure)--or the amount of leisure time spent with a spouse or other adults but not children (who have a way of turning leisure into work); and leisure fragmentation--or the number of leisure intervals and their length.

This is what the researchers discovered, in their own words: "In stark contrast with the changing amount of leisure, most of our quality indicators show declines in the quality of leisure time over this period for both men and women." Specifically, the amount of time we spend in pure leisure has declined, as has the time we spend in social leisure.

"Despite general increases in leisure time, Americans report feeling increasingly harried now compared with 40 years ago," say the authors. "Our findings may help explain this paradox."

What's Wrong with the South?

The South is trapped in a vicious cycle of low-wage, low-skill jobs, says a report on the region by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce (A Decade Behind: Breaking Out of the Low-Skill Trap in the Southern Economy). That's because the South lags in educational attainment, preventing the region from attracting high-skill, high-wage industries. The number-one job provider in the South is government. Number two is retail trade. Walmart is one of the top ten employers in 12 of the 15 states.

How Many Are Uninsured?

Figuring out how many Americans are not covered by health insurance is harder than you might think. The answer depends on the time frame. The most commonly used estimate of the nation's uninsured, for example, comes from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey. Every March, the CPS fields the Annual Social and Economic Supplement, which asks respondents for their health insurance status in the previous year. The CPS counts as uninsured only those who did not have health insurance for the entire previous calendar year. By that definition, 18.4 percent of Americans under age 65 were uninsured in 2010.

Other surveys measure the uninsured in different time frames. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, for example, estimates the number who were uninsured at any time during the previous calendar year. Naturally, that estimate is higher: 26.0 percent of people under age 65 were uninsured at some point in 2010.

Internships and Jobs

Percentage of 2012 college graduates who received a job offer by internship experience...

Paid internship: 60%
Unpaid internship: 37%
No internship: 36%

Source: NACE, 2012 Student Survey

Who Claimed Social Security Early?

Once upon a time, the majority of older Americans claimed their Social Security benefits at the earliest possible age of 62. In 1995, fully 50.7 percent of 62-year-olds filed for Social Security. The percentage fell steeply in the ensuing years to just 37.6 percent in 2007, reports the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Then the Great Recession hit, and the percentage claiming Social Security benefits at age 62 spiked to 42.4 percent in 2009.

The CRR's examination of these Great Recession early claimers reveals that they came from all socioeconomic backgrounds as households rich and poor attempted to make up for the loss of income caused by the economic downturn. The early claimers received their benefits 10 months sooner than they would have if there had been no recession, forfeiting $94 per month in benefits--or 7.6 percent of what they would have received.

Since the spike in 2009, the percentage claiming Social Security at age 62 has fallen, reverting to the long-term downward trend. Boomers have gotten the message--the longer they wait, the bigger their benefits.

Source: Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Who Claimed Social Security Early Due to the Great Recession?

Gamer Demographics

Everyone is having a hard time keeping up with new technology--even the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group for the video game industry.

According to an article in Ars Technica, a change in question wording in ESA's 2012 survey of gaming activity resulted in a younger age profile for the nation's gamers (average age = 30, down from 37 in 2011). Previous surveys had suggested that gamers were getting older, but the 2012 results revealed that earlier surveys--because they included only video game consoles or PCs and not tablet or phone games in the screening question--had been monitoring "more of a generational platform shift, where the traditional PC and console market continues to age while younger players gravitate towards smartphones, tablets, and portable systems," says Ars Technica's gaming editor Kyle Orland.

For more about the demographics of gamers, see Orland's article, "How Gaming's Demographics Reverted to 2005."

Why Do Educated People Live Longer?

Because education slows biological aging, according to an analysis in the August 2012 issue of Demography ("The Significance of Education for Mortality Compression in the United States").

The study examined mortality rates in the United States by age and education, finding that "highly educated persons are able to use their considerable resources to maximize their life chances under current conditions and, ultimately, delay the biological aging process."

Unemployed Young Adults by Country

The unemployment rate of 20-to-24-year-olds in the United States, at 14.6 percent in 2011, is well below the rate in Spain, Italy, France, and Sweden, but well above the rate in Japan, Germany, Australia, and Canada.

2011 unemployment rate of 20-24-year-olds
43.2% in Spain
26.5% in Italy
20.6% in France
18.3% in Sweden
16.5% in United Kingdom
14.6% in United States
12.1% in New Zealand
10.1% in Canada
8.4% in Australia
8.1% in Germany
7.7% in Japan

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, International Comparisons of Annual Labor Force Statistics, Adjusted to U.S. Concepts, 16 Countries, 1970-2011