Congress ends least-productive year in recent history
Congress enacted 57 laws — just 49 of them substantive — in the first session of its two-year term, the smallest first-year legislative output in nearly two decades.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Drew DeSilver
Senior Writer/Editor
Drew DeSilver is a senior writer at Pew Research Center.
Publications
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For most wireless-only households, look south and west
The states with the most wireless-only households tend to be largely rural and in the West or South; households in the Northeast are most likely to hang onto their landlines.
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Chart of the Week: Coffee and tea around the world
Worldwide tea is far more popular than coffee, but preferences for one beverage over the other fall into distinct geographic patterns.
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Global inequality: How the U.S. compares
The U.S. has one of the most unequal income distributions among developed nations — even after taxes and transfer payments are taken into account.
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Chart of the Week: Most new gun laws since Newtown ease restrictions
In the year since the Newtown school shootings, most new state gun laws have loosened rather than tightened restrictions.
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Who’s the boss? In U.S. business, it’s mostly men
Fewer than 5% of Fortune 1000 companies have women CEOs, and only 10% of women nationally say they’re a boss or top manager. Women are consistently less likely than men to say they want to be a boss someday.
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Regulators approve Volcker Rule, but public is split on financial regulation
About half of Americans think the government hasn’t gone far enough in regulating financial institutions following the 2007-08 financial crisis.
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Americans split on value of surveillance programs
Four-in-ten Americans believe the government’s phone and internet surveillance programs have made the U.S. safer against terrorism.
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Chart of the Week: How South Africa changed, and didn’t, over Mandela’s lifetime
South Africa experienced tremendous political change during Nelson Mandela’s lifetime, but whites remain on top of the country’s economy.
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U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928
President Obama took on a topic yesterday that most Americans don’t like to talk about much: inequality. There are a lot of ways to measure economic inequality (and we’ll be discussing more on Fact Tank), but one basic approach is to look at how much income flows to groups at different steps on the economic […]
