18 Million Americans example essay topic

This report is to inform you on the decade of the 1980's. People's jobs, income, ideas, opinions changed so much from 1980 to 1989. Fewer Americans belonged to labor unions in the 1980's. In 1980 there were nearly 21 million union members; that number had declined to 17 million by 1985. The most important "aspect" of a job for the majority of Americans was a "feeling of accomplishment, beating out high pay by a better than 2 to 1 margin".

In the mid-Eighties, 88% of Americans said they were satisfied with their jobs. In spite of this, less than 40% expected to remain in their current job for more than five years. Most Americans didn't think it would be difficult to get another job. This "indicated general optimism" about the economy and the job market in the mid- and late-Eighties. In the late Forties, Americans went to the movies an average of at least twice a month, but by the 1980's, people only went to the movies an average of five times a year. About 67% of Americans attended a play or a live theater performance at least once a year, and 60% attended a concert or other musical performance.

In the 1980's the majority of Americans believed sex education should be taught in public schools. 85% of people who voted were for this. That included 68% of all "born-again Christians", 80% of Republicans, and 77% of "rural people". One reason that people wanted sex education in schools was that Aids was causing a sense of panic among the general public. Also they felt that if sex education were not available there would be even more unwanted teenage pregnancies. A few years after the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, 60% of Americans supported legalized abortions.

But by the 1980's that had decreased to 50%. Some Americans compared abortion with murder, and felt that the fetus should have rights. On the other hand, some feared that if abortions weren't legal, more women would die from complications with illegal abortions. But most Americans said they could support a woman's decision to have an abortion if her life or mental health were in danger, or if she had been the victim of incest or rape. And while both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were opposed to abortion, and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist's "goal" was to overturn Roe vs. Wade, three-fourths of all Americans were convinced that abortion would never be made illegal In 1981 there were 2,422,000 marriages in the U.S. and 1,213,000 divorces. Between 1981 and 1985, the number of marriages rose 3% while the number of divorces declined 5%.

This is the first time this had happened in modern times. Interracial marriages accounted for only 1.3% of the total in 1982. Three-fourths of all first marriages occurred in a religious setting the other third were done by eloping. A 1983 survey of 100,000 adults showed that 48% of married men and 38% of married women had affairs. This had increased the rate of divorce.

In 1984, "some level of government" employed 18 million Americans. The federal government employed 2.9 million. The Postal Service employed nearly 750,000 people this year. During this time, the average household spent $21,788 a year, paying for taxes, mortgage or rent, car payments, food, and clothing. A 1984 study showed that 53% of 18-year old girls were having sex. A similar study showed that 66% of 18-year-old boys were doing to the same.

Less than half of both boys and girls used any protection. This caused 4 out of 10 teenage girls to become pregnant before they were 20. Most young girls were single mothers between the ages 18-29. To add to this, nearly half of the 892,000 teenage pregnancies ended in abortion.

Teenagers with poor school grades were more likely to be sexually experienced, while those with good grades were less likely. In the Eighties, kids were not in very good physical condition. Only 2% of 18 million kids passed the "Presidential Physical Fitness" test in 1984. Only about one in three met the "Amateur Athletic Union's" standards for average health. Studies have shown that due to an increase in television watching and less physical education in schools, children were not as healthy. In 1985, 77% of Americans lived in urban areas.

The five most "populous" urban areas were New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia. Also that year, 6.1% of the workforce was unemployed. In the Eighties, the majority of workers were "white-collar". 55% of those employed were in "managerial, professional, sales or technical jobs", while only 28% held blue-collar jobs.

13% were in the service industry and 4% of working Americans were in agriculture, while 8% were self-employed. There were two women and no blacks among the 100 senators of the 99th Congress between 1985 and 1987. In the House of Representatives there were 22 women and 20 blacks; 251 of the representatives were lawyers. 116,985,000 Americans earned wages, while the rest received some kind of income from the government. In 1985, nearly 60% of Americans were paid hourly, and the "median" hourly wage for men was $7.45. For women it was $5.26.

Among "salaried" workers, the highest paid occupations were airplane pilot, chemical engineer and lawyer. Half of one percent of the population earned more than $280,000. Although the majority American population had good income, about 33 million lived in poverty. Two-thirds of them were white. The majority of the poor lived in rural areas. Most of the poor, however, did not remain poor; less than 3% were poor for 8 or more years.

In 1985, Americans paid $329 billion in taxes on $2.3 trillion dollars of "adjusted gross income" as revealed on 101,700,000 income tax returns. However, Americans were not only giving money to the government, they had given over $80 million to charitable organizations. Also that year, 94% of American households had a television set, and 50% had a videocassette recorder, double the number from only a year earlier. After the "breakup" of AT&T, more and more Americans owned their telephones.

Another item in the Eighties was the answering machine; while only 5% of households had one of those, nearly 20% did two years later. Also 12% of American households owned a computer. Today almost every single household has pets. In 1985 60% of homes had at least one pet, including 46 million dogs, 45 million cats, 27 million birds, and 250 million fish. There were 45,480,000 single adults between the ages of 20-64 in America during 1985. A five-year study revealed that women made the first move on another person most of the time.

More than half of both men and were in relationships in which both people worked and shared the same responsibilities. Nine out of ten Americans believed marriage was the best of all living arrangements. The most important reason Americans had for getting married was 'love', followed by' to have children' and because it was 'better than living on one's own'. The number of Americans who thought divorce was acceptable had declined by nearly 5% since 1980. Also the numbers of physically abused women declined, but 1 out of every 38 married women was still physically abused. Half of the marriages in which cheating occurred ended in divorce.

Women who married in their teens had the highest divorce rate. Poor communication was said to be the leading cause of the divorce 90% of the time. There were also 1.5 million abortions performed in 1985, 43 for every 100 live births. The majority of women having abortions were unmarried. "Leisure" time declined in the Eighties, because the average workday increased from 46.9 hours in 1980 to 48.8 hours in 1985. Americans spent the majority of their leisure time at home in relaxing activities like reading or watching television.

One reason that TV viewing was on the rise was cable television service; cable was available to 68% of all households. People talked on the phone a lot, making 1,263,000 calls daily. As for outdoor activities, a 1985 "presidential commission" study revealed that 50% of Americans liked to walk, and nearly as many liked a pleasure drive, while some went swimming, played golf, and jogged. One out of four of people fished, and one out of ten went hunting. Many people went bicycling and played tennis. A lot of people also participated in aerobics, although 60% of the population was over weight.

By the end of 1985 the percentage of Americans who smoked had declined from a high of 45% to 30%. In spite of anti-smoking campaigns, polls showed that only 34% favored restrictions on smoking in the workplace. Only 8% supported an all-out ban on smoking, and only 32% supported a total ban on cigarette advertising. And 62% of smokers were willing to accept restrictions. In 1986, there were about 2,167,000 Americans on active military duty.

The U.S. military also employed a little over 1 million civilians. 10% of all ranks were women. The top five companies employing the most people were General Motors, Sears, Roebuck & Co., IBM, Ford Motor Co., and AT&T. There were 2,176,000 teachers in the public schools, earning an average salary of $25,257 a year. Among doctors, general "practitioners" averaged $79,000 a year, while neurosurgeons brought in $205,000 a year.

Fresh out of law school, an attorney could expect to make $26,000 with a law firm. The number one cause of a fight among spouses during this time was money, with adultery being the cause 25% of the time. There were 3,756,000 babies born in the U.S. in 1986. This number continued to decline in the birth rate since the 1950's. About 90% of the babies were wanted at the time of conception. About 8,686,000 working mothers made some kind of day care arrangements for their children.

In 1986, 2,402,000 students received high school diplomas, representing a 72% graduation rate. Studies showed that 93% of all students had tried alcohol by the time they were high school seniors, 11% drank several times a week, and there were an estimated 500,000 teenage alcoholics. As for marijuana, 54% of students admitted to having tried it. This rate was down from a high of 60% in 1979. Cocaine use, however, was increasing, with 17% of high school seniors having tried it. 30% of high school students were cigarette smokers.

In 1986, 82% of American adults watched television daily, and a TV set was on an average of 7 hours in an American household. Children and men watched TV an average of nearly four hours a day, while women watched about four-and-a-half hours a day. In 1986, nearly 105 million Americans took a vacation, with about one in ten traveling to foreign countries. Golfing and skiing were by far the most popular activities during a vacation. The most popular vacation destinations in the U.S. were Niagara Falls, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone National Park.

In 1986, the Senate repealed significant portions of the 1968 gun control law that had been passed following the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The National Rifle Association "exercised considerable" political power during the 1980's, That year polls revealed that 60% of Americans favored stricter gun laws, and only 8% wanted less strict controls than those that already existed. 70% of those polled favored the registration of all handguns. Another issues looked upon were AIDS, and just about everyone believed it was a very serious problem. While 53% of the American people thought AIDS could be contracted by living in the same house as someone with the disease, about two-thirds of Americans understood that it could not be contracted by breathing the same air or through touch.

A big majority, 87%, favored hospitals to accept AIDS victims, some hospitals were reluctant to do so, and 86% supported federal funding for free blood tests for anyone who wanted to be tested for AIDS. Americans "demonstrated their great faith in medical technology" when asked if they thought a cure for AIDS would be found in the next few years 84% said yes. In 1987, the population of the United States was 244,425,000. The top five most populated states were California, New York, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania. The five least populated states were North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont, Alaska, and Wyoming. And 61% of Americans lived in the same state in which they had been born.

In 1987,121,602,000 Americans were either working or looking for work. That included 76% of the men in this country and 56% of the women. During this year, the number of family households increased over non-family households for the first time in two decades. The number of unmarried couples living together was 2.3 million.

70% of Americans owned their own home. Renters paid an average of $332 a month in 1987 for previously occupied apartments, and $515 a month for new ones. The "median" family income was $30,853 that is three times what it was in 1970.23% of Americans made over $50,000, 20% made between $35-50,000, and 17.5% made between $25-35,000. A family making $86,000 found itself in the highest 5% of the population. That year, 56% of American women were in the workforce. The highest wages were paid in the West, the lowest in the South and Midwest.

"Casual sex" declined in the Eighties due to the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS in particular. Of the 11 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases reported in America in 1987, only 15,000 were AIDS, while there were 500,000 cases of herpes and 1,800,000 cases of gonorrhea. However, since AIDS was 100% fatal, it was the main concern, and by that year, 50,000 Americans had contracted it, with 73% of these being homosexual or bisexual men, 17% intravenous drug users, and 4% heterosexuals. Only 6.6% of AIDS victims were female. In 1987 there were 63,542,000 children under the age of 18 in this country. Many lived with only one parent.

A decade-long National Family Violence Survey revealed that severe violence against children was declining during the 1980's. This was due to tougher penalties against abusers, and the increased likelihood that child abuse would be reported From 1987 to 1989 statistics showed that there was a slight change in employment rates, personal income, birth and death rates. This year was full of energy with new and exciting invention such as the car phone and better TVs and computer. Although AIDS is still a growing academic, research for finding a cure is still under way.