• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 13, 2015

In 2014, Pew Research Center published more than 150 reports and some 600 blog posts covering a wide range of topics, including demographic change, media habits, technology adoption, religious affiliation, and public opinion in the U.S. and worldwide. Included in this Research Brief are a few of many facts found to be particularly striking by Pew, illustrating some major shifts in our politics, society, habits or families.

• Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines, and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive, than at any point in the last two decades: 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat; and, conversely, 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.

• The earnings gap between young adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher and those without has never been greater in the modern era, despite soaring student debt and high youth unemployment. In 1979, when the first wave of Baby Boomers were the same age that Millennials are today, the typical high school graduate earned about three-quarters (77%) of what a college graduate made. Today, Millennials with only a high school diploma earn 62% of what the typical college graduate earns.

• 72% of the public thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up from 52% who said so in 2002; and most people who say religion’s influence is waning see this as a bad thing. Perhaps as a consequence, a growing share say religion should play a role in politics.

• The Great Recession was hard on all American families. But even as the economic recovery has begun to mend asset prices, not all households have benefited alike, and wealth inequality has widened along racial and ethnic lines. The median wealth of white households was 13 times the wealth of black households and 10 times that of Hispanic households in 2013, compared with eight and nine times the wealth in 2010, respectively.

• Americans are more attached to their cellphones and internet access than their televisions or landline telephones, marking a shift in their communications habits since 2006. Over half of internet users now say the internet would be “very hard” to give up. And among this devoted group, 61% say the internet is essential to them, either for work or other reasons. Translated to the whole population, 39% of all Americans feel they absolutely need to have internet access.

• When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds: Consistent conservatives are tightly clustered around a single news source, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics, while consistent liberals name a few main news sources.

Main Source of Government and Political News (& of Respondents)

Consistent Liberals

   CNN (15%)

   NPR (13%)

   MSNBC (12%)

Consistent Conservatives

   Fox News (47%)

   Local Radio (11%)

   Local TV (5%)

• Major shifts continue to pressure America’s news businesses, as new organizations struggle to find a profitable model that increasingly depends on digital audiences and new revenue streams. The Pew State of the Media report found that there are 468 digital news outlets employing nearly 5,000 journalists. Even so, overall revenue for the news media industry has declined by one-third since 2006.

• The world’s aging population, especially in developed nations, has become a focus of concern, for the global economy and policy decisions related to social programs. By 2050, the majority of people in Japan, South Korea and Germany are projected to be older than 50. Brazil and Mexico, which now have a younger population than the U.S., will potentially have an older one than the U.S. by the middle of this century.

For additional information about this study and Pew Research, please visit here.