American Social Indicators, 2006: Getting Better but Feeling Worse

Over the past month, I have done twelve posts on American cultural indicators. Here is an index to those posts:

• Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy
• Suicide
• Crime (Part 1)
• Crime (Part 2)
• Substance Abuse
• Family Formation and Sexuality (Part 1)
• Family Formation and Sexuality (Part 2)
• Education
• Economic Status (Part 1)
• Economic Status (Part 2)
• Ethnicity
• Environment

What can we conclude from these indicators? First, we can say that the worst year in American history over the last fifty years was probably about 1981.

• The property crime rate hit its high in 1975, but violent crime was at its worst in 1981. The highest murder rate was in 1980.
• The suicide rate peaked in 1977.
• The abortion rate peaked in 1981.
• The divorce rate peaked in 1981.
• The highest rate for illicit drug use for high school seniors was in 1979, and for illegal drug use, excluding marijuana, was in 1981.
• The highest rate of cigarette use for high school seniors was in 1975, and for alcohol was in 1978.
• The rate for all (combined) sexually transmitted diseases was highest in 1977.
• The high school dropout rate declined steadily in the years before 1973. It flattened out and peaked in 1979 before continuing the historical pattern of decline.
• Composite SAT scores hit their lowest levels in 1980 and 1981.
• The highest rate of inflation was in 1980.
• The highest rate of poverty was in 1983.
• Unemployment hit its highest rate in 1982.
• Median household inflation-adjusted income was lower in 1981-1983 than in 1972.

Second, over the last twenty-five years, there has been at least modest improvement in all these measures and substantial improvement in several. Additionally, life expectancy continues a 150-year trend of increases, and infant mortality is at all-time lows.

This is not to say that every trend is positive:

• Sexually transmitted diseases have been on the rise in recent years.
• The rate of children born outside of two-parent environments is at historical highs and is slowly growing.
• The status of African Americans as a group relative to Whites has been slowly improving but at a snail's pace in too many regards. (Approximately two-thirds of African American children are in single-parent homes. The rate among Whites is slowly closing the gap.)

Still, the overall picture is remarkably positive.

Third, and most importantly, these indicators tell me that there is a significant disconnect between what is happening and what the general populace perceives is happening. There is a sense of gloom when I talk with people, regardless of political or ideological persuasion. There is a belief that our culture is in decay (although sometimes for opposing reasons depending on ideology.) Some reference the fall of the Roman Empire (due to cultural decay) as a metaphor for our day. Yet as I have shown, many of the most significant indicators point towards improving cultural health, not decay. So why do we feel so gloomy?

Some suggest that the War in Iraq and America's response to threats of terrorism have heightened our anxiety. I don't dismiss this altogether, but the sense of gloom precedes the events of 9/11, so I think there must be something deeper.

Some would suggest that major media outlets harp on the negative and the sensational to make money. Consequently, we get an exaggerated and distorted nature of how things are. The increased competition between media has brought this about. I suspect there is some truth in this claim. However, I think at least two other factors are more central.

First, I think there is a combination of rising expectations and the law of diminishing returns. When we begin to make headway on addressing some issue, expectations rise. We believe we should be able to do even more. Often, substantial improvements can easily and quickly be made in addressing almost any social problem, but each succeeding level of improvement tends to get exponentially more difficult and costly while rendering more modest levels of change. Thus, even though great progress is made over time, a growing sense of frustration develops with the inability to effect improvements in the present. 

Second, probably most significant, is a cultural divide about what a healthy culture looks like and what creates it. If we polled a broad spectrum of Americans, I don't think there would be much disagreement about my assessment of most of the variables I have reviewed. However, if we polled about what has led to these improvements and what will lead to more improvement, I expect we might find a stark divide.

I expect that there would be one group that would say that the return to traditional family values, economic freedom, law enforcement, and alternatives to public education has led to the turnaround we see in the culture. Another group would say it is the enforcement of constitutional rights (especially for women and minorities), government intervention, freedom from oppressive traditionalism (including religion), and public education that has made the difference. I suspect that these two groups are both minorities, but they are highly agitated and energized minorities. Each group sees the other's vision as an apocalyptic destruction of the gains made and a deterrent to future progress. Both factions are now led by idealistic, militant Baby Boomers who, feeling a creeping sense of their own mortality, are rallying for one last charge to conform the world to their idealistic visions. Because these camps are the energized people in the electorate, these are the people to whom the political parties cater.

Meanwhile, a third group of Americans (probably also a minority) is not swayed by either of the camps and takes a variety of more nuanced perspectives. Yet they feel pessimistic about the future because of the rancorous vitriol of the other two groups. In short, there is no consensus about the direction the nation needs to go to move forward.

For those who have read the works of William Strauss and Neil Howe, you will know this is not the first time we have been in this predicament. Our era is very similar to the mood of the late 1930s, the late 1850s (especially with an eerie similarity of having two different kinds of states: slave/free, red/blue), or the 1760s. There is an ebb and flow to cultural consensus, and right now, I suspect we are at low tide. I doubt the tide will be perceptibly rolling in for at least another decade.

Without consensus about direction or cause and effect in cultural change, every move on one or more of the social indicators only reinforces the templates used by those with the biggest cultural megaphones of our time. While things are getting better, everyone views things as becoming more precarious.

These are just some of my thoughts. I wonder what thoughts you might have?

Comments

[Nathan]

Interesting analysis and theories about where the feelings of decline come from. Do you think another contributor to pessimism might be that modernity's metanarrative of progress is so thoroughly doubted? Postmodern multiculturalism makes everyone doubtful that a gain in one area is a gain for everyone.

[Michael W. Kruse]

Nathan, I think the postmodern shift must feed into it somehow. We could have the debate about whether postmodern is truly a break from Modernism or a type of hyper-Modernism. Either way, major change brings anxiety.

I take the position that the general idea of progress actually is not a product of Modernism but of Christianity. Modernist Enlightenment thinkers dethroned God as "progressively" working out his purposes in history and inserted autonomous humanity as the masters of progress. It is my position that a return to the biblical narrative includes the idea of progress but with God, not human beings, at the center. But I digress.... :)