This year marks the tenth report of the annual American Family Survey, results from a collaboration between the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy and Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Deseret News. This long-term effort is now revealing larger trends and deeper insights into American’s perceptions of marriages and families, and how these attitudes relate to public policy and current events.
The principal investigators of the 2024 report, released in February, were Christopher Karpowitz and Jeremy Pope, professors from the political science department at BYU and co-directors of the CSED. They both traveled to Washington D.C. to present their research findings with a discussion panel hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.
From data collected over the past decade, Karpowitz and Pope identified several trends in Americans' attitudes on family topics, including:
- There is a growing concern for the economic challenges families face (up 20 points).
- Americans are less concerned with cultural issues, such as declining religion and an increase in sexual permissiveness (down 19 points).
- There is a decline in concern for structural issues, such as single-parent homes and a lack of parental discipline.
“The economy has always caused worry for many Americans, but in the 10 [JK4] years since we first began the American Family Survey, it has become an even more pressing issue for families — far surpassing their cultural concerns,” says Karpowitz. “This was particularly evident after the end of pandemic-era government aid programs that benefitted many families, and after the last few years’ rise in inflation, which close to 60% of Americans cite as a major concern.”
Much of the trending data were brought to life with the help of research assistant, Ellie Mitchell, a senior studying political science with an emphasis on research and analysis. She used her data analysis and data visualization skills to help combine data sets from 10 annual surveys.
“I was responsible for lining up the data year by year,” says Mitchell. “The survey included similar questions every year, but sometimes the response options were a little bit different, or the variable name was slightly different.”
A section Mitchell found interesting included a couple of survey questions that asked how people think their families are doing and how families generally are doing. “People generally think their own family is doing pretty well, though they still have concerns for their families, especially economic concerns, but they think families in general are doing much worse,” she says.
The survey is important because it provides policy makers with data about the needs, perceptions, ideas, and worries of families in the United States from both Republican and Democrat families. The report includes current attitudes and beliefs, blind spots from both sides of the political spectrum, along recommended opportunities for action.
At the presentation with the American Enterprise Institute, Karpowitz brought up the topic of polarized America. He mentioned surprising data, as well. “When it comes to day-to-day family life, red and blue families in the United States look very similar,” he says. Karpowitz went on to share where this was seen, including high levels of joy in raising children, relationship satisfaction, placing value in their identities as parents and partners or spouses, and even activities families do together like eating dinner together.
Along with this point, Karpowitz and Pope want their audience to notice how both parties have significant blind spots concerning policies that will benefit American families, especially the most vulnerable families.
Pope also notes that the attitude Americans have toward having and loving families shows a slight decline. “Even though the trend away from family is small, it’s real and I think we should be paying attention to it and doing something about it before it becomes significantly more serious in the future.”
Check out the 2024 American Family Survey report to learn more about data concerning families found last year.