{"issues":[],"legislators":[],"articles":[{"title":"Table of Contents","id":3,"slug":"3-table-contents","links":{"self":"https://annualreport.usafacts.org/articles/3-table-contents","article_comments":"/api/article_comments?article_id=3","signatures":"/api/v3/articles/3/signatures?include=user"},"user_id":13,"cta_prompt":"Check out all of USAFacts' findings →","cta_type":"custom","cta_text":"DOWNLOAD REPORT","cta_url":"https://static.usafacts.org/public/annual-report/2019/USAFacts_2019_Annual_Report.pdf","formatted_publish_date":"4.29.19","image_urls":{"large":"https://annualreport-ul.usafacts.org/ul/q_auto/9G8G08JA/4a295f/ferdinand-stohr-198748-unsplash%20%281%29.jpg","medium":"https://annualreport-ul.usafacts.org/ul/q_auto/9G8G08JA/4a295f/ferdinand-stohr-198748-unsplash%20%281%29.jpg","small":"https://annualreport-ul.usafacts.org/ul/q_auto/9G8G08JA/4a295f/ferdinand-stohr-198748-unsplash%20%281%29.jpg","thumb":"https://annualreport-ul.usafacts.org/ul/q_auto/9G8G08JA/4a295f/ferdinand-stohr-198748-unsplash%20%281%29.jpg","xsmall":"https://annualreport-ul.usafacts.org/ul/q_auto/9G8G08JA/4a295f/ferdinand-stohr-198748-unsplash%20%281%29.jpg"},"profile_id":1,"action_count":20,"html_content":"

WELCOME

POPULATION

Our Population Has Grown by 100 Million People Since 1980, But Growth is Slowing

More Americans Are Living Alone, and Fewer Have Kids

One In Five Residents In Florida, Maine, and Puerto Rico Is Elderly (Over Age 65)

GOVERNMENT FINANCES

Government Spending Has Exceeded Revenue in All But Six Years Since 1980

Government Tax Revenue Per Capita Increased 54% Since 1980, After Adjusting For Inflation

Government Spending Per Capita Increased 65% in Real Terms Since 1980

Revenue 2016 vs. 1980

2016 Government Spending Was $5.9 Trillion

1980 Government Spending: $833 Billion

Nearly Half of Government Spending Supports the Elderly or Disadvantaged as Either a Cash Transfer or a Subsidy for a Service on Their Behalf

State and Local Revenue Make Up Just Over OneThird (35.3%) of All Government Revenue

The Federal Government Transferred $661 Billion In Grants to State and Local Governments In 2016

45% of Government Spending Is From State & Local Governments

Some States Spend Twice as Much Per Capita Compared to Their Counterparts

ECONOMY AND BUSINESS

The Economy Grew Steadily In 2018

Results of Economic Growth Differ by Industry

The Trade Deficit Is Expanding

THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF AMERICANS

Including Government Transfers, Total Income Has Gone Up for Families Since 2000

Employment is on the Rise Among Elderly (65+) and Non-White Populations

The Distribution of Wages Varies By State

Health and Housing are the Largest Spending Categories for all Families

Americans Increasingly Have Access to Retirement Benefits

Government Spending on Retirement Programs is on the Rise

SUPPORTING THE DISADVANTAGED

Government Programs for the Disadvantaged are Reaching More People

Poverty Rates are Decreasing, But They are Not Equal Across Races, Family Types, or Age Groups

13 Million Children, Nearly 1 in 6, are in Poverty

EDUCATING OUR NATION

Education Spending Continues to Increase, While 1 in 3 Eighth-Graders are Proficient in Math and Reading

Higher Education is Getting More Expensive, and Students are Sharing More of the Burden

HEALTH

National Spending on Personal Health Care Reached $9,107 Per Person, Up 221% Since 1980 After Adjusting for Inflation

Government Health Insurance Programs Cost More Than Private Insurance, But the Cost of Private Insurance is Rising Faster

Opioid Deaths Increased 121% in the Last Five Years, But Deaths From Cocaine and Methamphetamines are Increasing Faster

Despite Increasing Health Care Costs, Health Outcomes are Showing Limited Improvement

CRIME AND INCARCERATION

Violent and Property Crime Rates Have Fallen, But Drug Abuse Arrests Have Grown

The Correctional Population Has Outpaced Population Growth By a Factor of 6

Firearm Deaths Make Up 1% of All Deaths But Grew Faster Than the Population Since 2014

MILITARY, FOREIGN AID, AND IMMIGRATION

The US Military Presence Is Shrinking Abroad

Veterans Have Higher Employment and Wages Compared to General Public

In 2017, the US Spent Less Than 1% of Its Budget on Foreign Aid

14% of Residents Are Born Outside the US, Returning to Historic Levels

TRANSPORTATION, INFRASTRUCTURE, ENERGY, AND NATURAL DISASTERS

People Are Traveling Farther, With Fewer Fatalities

Americans Drive Solo to Work, Despite Long Delays and Rough Roads

Energy Use Per Capita Has Decreased, with Transportation Replacing Power as the Leading Producer of Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The US Is Diversifying Its Power Supply and Becoming More Energy-Independent

We are Experiencing More Fire and Severe Storm Declarations, While Hurricanes Remain the Deadliest and Most Costly Natural Disasters

SOURCES

USAFacts 2019 Annual Report

This document was created and published by USAFacts Institute, a Delaware nonprofit, nonstock corporation (“USAFacts”).

USAFacts trademarks: The USAFacts name and USAFacts-branded logos, seals and related marks are legally protected trademarks/design marks of USAFacts. USAFacts reserves all rights in such marks. You are not authorized to use the trademarks, seals, or logos of USAFacts.

Facts, figures and US Government reports: The facts, figures, and United States government reports cited or quoted on this document are not subject to copyright or other intellectual property right protections in the United States. The purpose of this document is to make such information available to all people, and USAFacts encourages you to use this information for education, analysis and discussion regarding government activities.

Original content: The particular way ideas, facts, or figures are expressed in this document (including text, photographs, images, illustrations, graphics, and the selection, coordination and arrangement of such materials) (hereafter, “Original Content”) is the intellectual property of USAFacts protected by copyrights and similar rights. USAFacts grants you a license to use Original Content under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (or higher) International Public License (the “CC BY-SA 4.0 License”). See, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

No endorsement: The CC BY-SA 4.0 License requires, among other things, that anyone using Original Content give “attribution” to USAFacts. Original Content should be cited by reference to this document’s name and the specific pages in this document on which such Original Content is found. When you attribute Original Content to USAFacts, you are not permitted to suggest or imply that USAFacts in any way endorses or supports your particular use of such Original Content unless USAFacts gives you express written permission to do so. Furthermore, if USAFacts requests that you remove any attribution identifying USAFacts or this document, you must do so as soon as possible.

Disclaimer of warranties: USAFacts does not guarantee the accuracy of information found in this document and you agree that if you rely upon such information you do so at your own risk. You should double-check all government data referenced on this document by examining all sources cited.

Next: Letter to Our Readers

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Our nation, in numbers.

If you’re looking to gain insight on our government by the numbers, look no further. In this year’s annual report, we’ve summarized the most recent data on population trends, government finances, and outcomes related to government activities. USAFacts is a not-for-profit, non-partisan resource built for interested people like you. Red or blue, left or right, or anywhere in between, it doesn’t matter. We believe understanding the numbers is the cornerstone to a healthy and productive democracy. Our goal is to help inform active citizenship and fact-based debate.

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The changing American experience

Dear Reader,

Our government’s mission is clearly outlined in the US Constitution: to establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. What may be less clear is how to measure progress toward that more perfect union. Certainly, we need our government to make decisions based on the facts; government numbers provide historical progress, or lack thereof, with more accuracy and context than any other available source. At a time when the most basic facts of public life are subject to dispute, this common understanding is more important than ever.

I founded USAFacts in 2017 because I wanted to know how the government collects and spends money on behalf of Americans and if it was contributing to a better quality of life. I wanted that information to be available to the public and easy to understand, so we put it all on a website, USAFacts.org. We also assemble that data each year in an annual report, to allow you to form your own views of how our government is serving citizens, so that you can decide and advocate for where we should go as a country.

The most recent data tells us our government collected $5.1 trillion from taxpayers and other sources and spent $5.9 trillion; that equates to $18,114 for every person living in the US. Since only half of spending is driven by the federal government, we look at combined spending by federal, state and local governments. Without the big picture of government in its entirety, it is hard to tell which part is responsible for outcomes like keeping Americans healthy, fixing our roads, or educating our nation’s children.

This year in our Annual Report, we focus on who lives in the United States and the quality of their lives – who is born in here and who moves here, who goes to college, starts families and careers, stays healthy or gets sick, lives in affluence or poverty or in between, and grows old. These numbers represent our families, our neighbors, our communities, and ourselves. They show how we are changing: making progress in areas like education, where 69.8% of students graduating high school in 2017 attended college (up more than 20 points since 1980), and falling back in areas like homeownership, which has decreased 5 points over the past decade to 64% in 2016.

Although this report should be read in its entirety to understand the state of our nation, here are a few numbers that caught special attention from me:

America is going through significant demographic changes. We are growing older; the median age of Americans is rising. Seniors now make up 16% of the population (up from 11% in 1980), and children under 18 make up 23% of the population (down from 28%). Seniors earn less in wages than other Americans, which is one factor that depresses national median household income. America is becoming more diverse. White (non-Hispanic) people are 61% of the population today, down from 76% in 1990. And our population is growing nearly equally from people moving to the US (48% of population growth from 2017-2018) as it is from births exceeding deaths (52% of growth). The US is currently made up of more first-generation immigrants (14%) than it has been since the early 1900s.

The American household is shrinking. More people are living alone in America, a greater share of the population is divorced, and there are more single-parent families and households without children. All of this is leading to a shrinking average household size, meaning fewer wage earners per household, again pushing down median household income.

Families in the middle 20% receive more from the government in 2017 than they did in 2000. Families and individuals in the middle 20% of income earners make 9% less in wages and salaries than they did in 2000; however, they also receive 59% more in transfers from the government and pay 12% less in taxes. This decline in wages and salaries was true for every family type in the middle 20% except the elderly, who saw a 13% increase in wages over this time period, possibly due to higher employment among this group (18.6% employment in 2017 compared to 12.5% in 2000). An earnings gap persists between genders, with women earning 80.5 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts in 2017, although it has improved from 74 cents in 2000.

While educational outcomes are improving for all students, the outcomes of our school system vary widely by race and ethnicity. Since 1992, eighth-grade math scores have improved 19 percentage points and reading scores 7 percentage points. Black and Hispanic students are now twice as likely to have completed college than in 1993. However, test scores vary widely by race: 55% of Asian students are proficient in reading compared to 45% of White students, 23% of Hispanic students, and 18% of Black students.

Crime and incarceration rates are falling but differ among demographic groups. Rates of violent crime and property crime have fallen by more than half since 1991. However, arrest rates for drug crimes increased 25% and are now the most common arrest. Although the incarceration rate is falling across races, Black Americans, despite accounting for 12% of the population, make up 27% of arrests and 33% of prisoners today.

As seniors become a larger share of the American population, they are working longer and earning more, and government is spending more for their health and well-being. Compared to 1980, seniors today are 55% more likely to be employed and make up an increasing share of the workforce. As a result, in 2017 the average family with a head of household over 65 made $32,214 from employment (compared to $20,790 in 2000) and received $20,492 in Social Security (compared to $19,997 in 2000). Social Security and Medicare, the largest government programs to aid seniors, now account for 26% of Federal government spending, up from 18% in 1980.

Health care spending per person is increasing, but life expectancy is falling and the age that people die is staying the same. We spend $2.9 trillion, or $9,107 per person, on healthcare in the United States, an increase of 59% since 1999. Over this same period, however, we haven’t seen improvements in our life expectancy, which has decreased each of the past three years, or in the average age we die, which has only increased by 0.7 years since 1999 to 73.1.

As we choose leaders who make decisions about how to spend our money and manage our nation, we need to understand how our country is changing and how those changes impact the policies we pursue. We must continue to find data, organize it, and make it accessible and understandable to the public. A new federal law mandates that federal agencies make their data machine-readable by 2020. That’s an amazing step forward for researchers like us, who have analyzed government data from PDFs, CDs, and other archaic sources to bring it all together for you.

We hope you will use these numbers to challenge your assumptions and strengthen your understanding of our society. Use data when you watch the news, when doing research, when teaching students, when writing laws, when scrolling through social media, and especially when voting. We’ll give you the numbers. You get to decide.

Thank you for your attention to the facts.

Sincerely,

Steve Ballmer

Next: We The People

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Numbers Geek is a GeekWire podcast that uses data to illuminate some of the biggest issues facing the country.

And this episode features Steve Ballmer, founder of USAFacts and former CEO of Microsoft, in conversation about the 2019 USAFacts Annual Report. Just click above to watch the video or below to listen to the podcast.

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Federal, state, and local governments employ over 23 million people; 47% are in education.

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Including Government Transfers, Total Income Has Gone Up for Families Since 2000

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