Robert H. Moore: America today – Who are we?
Robert H. Moore
America today – Who are we?
As America reels from a fractured economy, bitter partisan divides and the human/financial costs of two wars, it is helpful to broaden our perspective. This column looks beyond the week-to-week headlines to focus on our complicated strengths and weaknesses as a people. Earlier this year the U.S. Census Bureau published the 2010 edition of its Statistical Abstract of the U.S. Several observers, including the economic journalist Robert J. Samuelson, have mined this voluminous report for fascinating nuggets of information. Others, such as University of Michigan demographer William H. Frey, have weighed in on the dangers of oversimplifying certain patterns of American life.
DAILY LIFE
- Food is cheaper in the U.S. than in most industrialized countries. Only 6.9 percent of our consumer spending goes for food consumed at home. Germans spend more (11.4%), Italians over twice as much (14.5%), and Mexicans (24.2%).
- Ironically, the easy availability of inexpensive prepackaged meals and snacks contributes to our obesity crisis. Most credible estimates suggest that almost 35 percent of U.S. adults are obese, which is triple France’s rate and four times Swiss rates.
- American medical spending related to adult obesity totaled $147 billion in 2008. Nearly one in three American children ages 2 to 19 is currently obese or overweight.
- Our energy challenges are exacerbated by the fact that three-quarters of us drive solo to work. Slightly over 10 percent carpool, while only five percent use public transportation.
- We spend on average about 50 minutes for a round trip commute, with the longest time in New York and the shortest in the Dakotas.
- On average we spend over 1,600 hours a year watching TV, which equates to 67 days a year.
- Our automotive energy consumption has drastically increased from 1980 to 2007, as the number of SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks have almost quadrupled to 101.5 million. During the same time, the number of cars grew only 12 percent to 135.9 million.
As Robert Samuelson notes, the meaning of such “multitudes of facts” is in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, he correctly contends ”how we discuss, interpret and debate them is the stuff of democracy.”
MEGASTATE POLITICS
- Since World War II, the Sunbelt megastates of Florida, Texas and California have consistently expanded their populations. Consequently, the growth of their congressional delegations outpaced all other states. However, this pattern is changing.
- Florida may only add one seat as a result of the 2010 census. According to the demographer William Frey, “the mortgage meltdown has led to an unprecedented exodus from the state in the past two years.”
- In California meanwhile, Frey reports that in the last decade a large number of people were driven out of the state by exploding housing costs before the bubble burst. Thus, California is unlikely to gain any congressional seats for the first time since it achieved statehood in 1850.
- Texas, on the other hand, may well gain four congressional seats because it largely missed the housing crisis. Texas also benefited from migration, particularly from Louisiana families who were escaping the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
RACIAL AND ETHNIC DIVERSITY
David Broder of The Washington Post recently noted that the 2010 Census will document that when the U. S. passed the 300 million mark in population in the past decade “83 percent of that growth came from nonwhites” and “nearly one out of four Americans under 18 has at least one immigrant parent.”
- Census Bureau projections suggest that even under “a no further immigration” scenario the minority share of our population would expand from 35 percent to 42 percent by 2050.
- The District of Colombia and four states (California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii) are currently minority white.
- More than 30 percent of those in half of the nation’s congressional districts are minorities. This compares to only a quarter of districts in 1992.
- William Frey contends that since 2000, the fastest Hispanic growth has been in Arkansas, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee.
- Even border states such as Arizona and New Mexico have different demographics. Randal Archibold of The New York Times reports “New Mexico (population two million) has the highest percentage of Hispanics of any state – 45 percent, compared with 30 percent in Arizona (population 6.5 million.)” The New Mexico legislature is 44 percent Hispanic as compared to 16 percent in Arizona.
- Color lines in America are blurring in surprising ways with people increasingly identifying themselves with more than one race.
- The number of mixed-race married couples has more than doubled since 1990. Almost 8 percent of all marriages are now mixed-race.
LIFE AND DEATH
In 2008, according to the Pew Research Center, 41 percent of American births were to unmarried women. This is slightly more than double the rate in 1980. The percent of children under the federal poverty line is virtually the same as it was in 1980 at almost 18 percent.
- Earlier this month, the President’s Cancer Panel announced that in 2009 almost 1.5 million American women, men and children were diagnosed with cancer and 562,000 individuals died from the disease.
- Smoking among adults has declined from slightly over 25 percent in 1990 to 19.7 percent by 2008.
- Cancer survivors (5 years out) have risen from about 62.5% in 1990-92 to just over 69 percent in 1999-2005 for whites. For blacks, the five year survival rates have improved from 48.2 percent to 59.4 percent in 1999 -2005.
- About 6,000 teenagers die in car crashes each year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that “the crash rate per mile driven for 16-year olds is almost 10 times the rate for drivers 30 to 59.”
- Several decades ago, escalating murders and assaults were overwhelming local and state governments. Samuelson notes “from 1993 to 2007, murders dropped from 25,000 to 17,000 and robberies from 660,000 to 445,000.” Although explanations vary, he believes that “possibilities include better policing techniques and tougher sentencing (the incarcerated population doubled from 1.15 million in 1990 to 2.29 million in 2007.”
- Despite the upheavals of recent decades, we appear to be more optimistic as a group than those in many other countries. Our suicide rate was 10.2 per 100,000 individuals in 2004, which is less than 11.9 average for all industrial countries. France’s and Japan’s averages were 15.1 and 20.3 respectively.
FUTURE PROSPECTS
Recent polls suggest that 60 percent of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction and that we are in long-term decline. However, there are a number of promising trends which columnist David Brooks and others cite to counter such pessimism.
- Most analysts project the U.S. population will surge by an additional 100 million people in the next forty years. If we devote the appropriate resources, our population of 400 million should be better educated and healthier than in most countries.
- They will also be relatively enterprising and young with only a quarter over 60 by 2050. Projections for China and Japan are that 31 percent and 41 percent of their populations, respectively, will be over 60 by 2050.
- David Broder suggests that the 2010 Census will show that there are nine metro areas with impressive growth in population, diversity and educational attainment. In addition to Washington, D.C. and three areas in Texas, the others are in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington state.
- Geographer Joel Kotkin argues in The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 that we are expanding into “an archipelago of vibrant suburban town centers, villages, and urban cores.” Kotkin believes that we will have hundreds of compact self-sufficient, suburban villages and growing prosperous low-cost hubs on the American plains such as Fargo, Dubuque, Iowa City, Sioux Falls, and Boise.
- David Brooks notes that our “demographic growth is driven partly by fertility. The American fertility rate is 50 percent higher than Russia, Germany, or Japan, and much higher than China.”
- We will continue to benefit from the fact that the U.S. remains a magnet for immigrants. Despite current immigration controversies, America is among the best in the world at assimilating others. In recent years, half the world’s skilled immigrants have come to our shores.
* * * * *
In reviewing the work of Joel Kotkin and Stephen J. Rose’s Rebound: Why America will Emerge Stronger from the Financial Crisis, David Brooks argues that “the U.S. is on the verge of a demographic, economic, and social revival built on our historic strengths.” If this prophecy is to be realized, we must not only find more effective ways to address what Brooks has called our “rotten political culture,” but we must constructively engage the “multitudes of facts” about our changing society. We can better address the former by championing our Founding Fathers’ concepts of transparency supported by checks and balances and backed by accountability. The latter requires learning to flourish in a more complex and dynamic society. Although many may wish to change the demographic “facts on the ground,” history teaches us that this is a futile effort. The data we have reviewed illustrate that our challenge is to live productively within an evolving culture. As New Mexico governor Bill Richardson has said, “There is a decided positive in encouraging biculturalism and people working and living together instead of inciting tension.” To do otherwise, given our escalating multicultural realities, is to invite chaos and ruin.
Dr. Robert H. Moore, our national columnist, is a graduate of Davidson College and the University of North Carolina. He taught at the universities of Wisconsin and Maryland and served as a Army captain on the West Point faculty. He was the Emerging Issues Coordinator for The Conference Board in New York City and worked for many years in financial services in Washington, D. C. and New York. He is the coauthor of the award-winning Spreading the Risks: Insuring the American Experience and School for Soldiers: West Point and the Profession of Arms.
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