Wednesday, July 10, 2013

No, America is not going to hell

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/2013/jul/01/no-america-not-going-hell/

Monday, July 1, 2013
Jay Bookman

The "America is going to hell" lobby has seemed to become increasingly vocal, with proponents of the theory citing everything from demographic change and gay marriage to a "culture of violence" as evidence of this supposed decline. And in many cases, it just ain't true.

Take the murder rate, for example. You might not know it from the nightly local news, but the murder rate has fallen by more than half, from 9.8 per 100,000 residents in 1991 to 4.8 per 100,000 in 2010, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. The overall violent crime rate has fallen starkly as well, from 758 per 100,000 in 1991 to 403 per 100,000 in 2010. (That decline applies to Georgia as well. Our murder rate fell from 9.5 per 100,000 in 1996 to 5.6 in 2011.)

Likewise, the national high school graduation rate is now approaching 75 percent, according to Education Week, which is the highest rate in 40 years and up eight percentage points in the last decade. Latino graduation rates are up 16 points in that time frame; black graduation rates are up 13 points.

-----

No comments:

Post a Comment