Global poverty has halved over the last decade, but a staggering 71% of the world’s population remains low-income or poor, living off $10 or less a day. These are among the findings of a new Pew Research Center reportthat looked at changes in income for 111 countries between 2001 and 2011. The report, “A Global Middle Class Is More Promise Than …
Why doesn’t everyone believe in God?: The skeptical brain may hold the answer – LALA STONE
Christopher Obal used to be a Christian. He grew up in Queens, New York, and when he was 5 years old, his parents left Catholicism for a very different form of Christianity. While they didn’t claim a specific denomination, he said the churches they went to would probably be described as Pentecostal, evangelical and charismatic. “We attended churches where people …
What Do Americans Think About Economic Inequality? – Lawrence Wittner
Are Americans disturbed about growing economic inequality in the United States? Numerous opinion surveys in recent years indicate that substantial majorities of Americans not only recognize that the gap between the wealthy and everyone else has grown, but favor greater economic equality. A Gallup poll conducted in April 2015 found that 63 percent of respondents believed that wealth in the United States should …
The Most Common Job in 29 States to Nearly Vanish in 10 Years; Know What That Job Is? Michael Shedlock
We used data from the Census Bureau, which has two catch-all categories: “managers not elsewhere classified” and “salespersons not elsewhere classified.” Because those categories are broad and vague to the point of meaninglessness, we excluded them from our map. Self-Driving Trucks Will Hit Us Like Ton of Bricks Please consider Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck. …
Poll finds mass opposition in Europe to war drive vs. Russia over Ukraine By Alex Lantier
The findings of a poll published yesterday by the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center, showing broad opposition in Europe to a NATO war with Russia, underscore the anti-democratic character of the US-led war drive against Russia over Ukraine. The poll was formulated to elicit answers as favorable as possible to US and NATO policy, particularly in regard to a possible …
SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE: RELIGIOUS (NON) AFFILIATION MIGHT NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS – Peter Laarman
If religious kitsch is a guilty pleasure, one of my favorite indulgences is a graphic that depicts a school of ichthus—the simple outline of a fish that is was an early symbol for followers of Christ—with a contemporary “evangellyfish” swimming in the opposite direction. The caption reads, simply, “Go against the flow.” The 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, which is being rolled …
PREDICTING THE FUTURE OF RELIGION: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT – Ed Simon
This week’s news from Pew on the decline of institutional Christianity, with its trove of data on the “unaffiliated” and the decline of the mainstream, has stolen the stage from last month’s release of Pew’s report on the Future of World Religions—a study that concluded that while atheists, agnostics and the unchurched are on the rise in the U.S. their numbers are projected to decline globally. …
Why More and More Women Are Embracing Non-Belief – Amanda Marcotte
Atheists were abuzz this week over Pew Research releasing new numbers [3] showing that the number of “nones” (people who have no religion at all) in the U.S. is soaring to record levels, making up a whopping 56 million Americans. In just the past seven years, the percentage of Americans who say they have no specific religious affiliation went from 16 percent to …
Support for the Death Penalty at Lowest Point in 40 Years – Terrell Jermaine Starr
While most Americans still favor the death penalty for those convicted of murder, support for capital punishment is lower than it has been in 40 years, according to the Pew Research Center [3]. Today, 56 percent of Americans favor the death penalty, six points lower than the 62 percent of people who favored it back 2011. In 1996, support for the death …
Religion Across the Globe Is Changing, But Not the Way You Think
AlterNet and other progressive news sites frequently [3] publish articles about the decline [4] of Christian hegemony in the United States. While this view is to some extent true, it doesn’t necessarily account for other long-term demographic trends, including population growth and migration. In a new report, The Future of World Religions [5], the Pew Research Center attempts to round out the picture and look at patterns of …