Six national surveys · 1972–2024

Chat with fifty years of American survey data.

Ask a question and get an answer computed from six of the country's longest-running surveys, with the source attached. Turn it into an essay, a brief or a post. Every number is checked against the data before it's published.

Ask a question Read the essays

In 2024, said abortion should be legal for any reason — up from 39.5% in 2006.

Every number links to its source, years, sample size and margin of error.

66 essays so far, all built this way.

Every number comes from a real calculation.

Ask anything the surveys cover. ctzn.pub runs the numbers on the original data and shows its work.

Ask

Ask a question in plain English. You get the answer, its margin of error and a citation.

Write

Turn answers into essays and policy briefs, with slide decks coming soon. Every number is checked again before anything is published.

Cite

Every finding has its own permanent link, with APA and BibTeX ready to copy.

From raw data to citation

The same four steps for every number on the site.

Snapshot

A fixed copy of the source data, so a result reads the same next year as it does today.

Recipe

The calculation, using each survey’s own weights and rules.

Claim

The result, with its source and method, at a permanent link.

Citation

APA or BibTeX in one click.

Checked against published research

We reproduce published findings, then carry them forward to the latest survey years.

4 studies

Published findings from academic journals and federal agencies, reproduced here.

16 of 16

Figures from a federal agency’s 2005–2015 table, matched to the decimal.

0.005 points

The largest gap between our results and an independent analysis, across 289 estimates.

A statistician reviews every analysis

Before we publish results from a new source, a statistician reviews the full plan: which weights, which groups, and where a series changes over time. If the plan changes, it gets reviewed again. Nothing runs until it's approved.

Built for libraries

What libraries look for in a reference tool:

Click any number to see where it came from
Caveats shown right beside the results
Citations that keep working, guaranteed in writing
Questions are never used to train models
Built on public data, free to cite and share

233 essays, apps and charts

Explore by topic.

Read an essay, open an app, or browse the charts.

Politics & Polarization

186

How Americans divide by party, and how that has changed since the 1970s.

AppThe American Political AlmanacEvery presidential election since 1868, county by county, with pages for each state, candidate and era.County & state returns (1868–2024)

AppThe Issue AlmanacPick an issue and watch opinion divide — by party, by place, by person — across a decade and a half of American public opinion.CES (2006–2021)

EssayTwo Shocks, One MirrorA Black president and a killing in Minneapolis were supposed to bend the arc of American racial opinion. The survey record says one barely registered — and the other moved the country sharply, briefly, and only on one side of the aisle.RaceGSS + ANES (1972–2024)

EssayVoting Against the GrainAbout four in ten partisans live in a county that votes the other way. Pick one of the four kinds of partisan and watch how — and where — they break from their party at the ballot box.CES (2008–2024)

EssayThe UnpackingFor a generation the Big Sort ran one way: Americans piling into landslide neighborhoods where they never met the other side. Below the county line, between 2016 and 2024, it went briefly into reverse — and the Democratic city did most of the unpacking.Geography & placePartisanshipPrecinct returns · 2016–2024

EssayThe Purple County Is a LieDrop below the county map, to the 181,149 precincts where ballots are actually counted, and most of America's "moderate" places dissolve into deep-blue and deep-red neighborhoods that never meet. The country is more sorted than the choropleth admits.Geography & placePartisanshipMIT Election Lab · 2024 precinct returns

EssayWho Censors WhomFor half a century the GSS has asked whether unpopular speakers should be allowed to speak. The question is no longer which party is more tolerant but tolerant of whom.Morality & cultureGSS (1976–2024)

EssayThe Abortion SortAcross the ANES 1980-2024, abortion traveled from a cross-cutting issue on which the parties were statistically tied to the clearest single marker of party. What had been a three-point gap became one of more than fifty.Morality & culturePartisanshipANES Cumulative File (1980–2024)

EssayThe Office Ladder of DefectionAmericans once happily voted for a president of one party and a congressman of the other. Over fifty years that split-ticket structure first widened, then collapsed into a straight party line.PartisanshipANES (1952–2024)

EssayOne Country, Two TimelinesANES, GSS, and county returns show the American South did three things at once: it realigned on party and the vote, converged on economics, and grew more distinct on religion and culture.Geography & placePartisanshipANES + GSS

EssayThe Economy Is a Partisan MirrorAsk Americans whether the economy got better or worse last year and they will mostly tell you who sits in the White House. The gap between the parties' answers has roughly doubled — and it snaps shut and reopens at every inauguration.PartisanshipClass & economicsANES (1980–2024)

EssayPartisanship Ate the ThermometersFor sixty years Americans have rated social groups on a 0–100 scale. Which dividing line organizes those feelings used to be race. Now it is party.PartisanshipANES Cumulative File (1964–)

Happiness & Well-Being

13

What makes life feel good, in the US and around the world.

EssayThe Stress Decade: How the World's Days Got Heavier, 2008–2019Between 2008 and 2019 — before anyone had heard of COVID-19 — the share of humanity reporting a stressful day rose by ten percentage points. Enjoyment never moved.Gallup World Poll (2008–2019)

EssayThe Thin Cushion: Money Softens Few of Life's BlowsFifty years of American survey data say wealth softens remarkably few of life's blows — and for some, the well-off fall further.GSS (1972–2024)

EssayThe Plateau Is in the Tail, Not the MeanThe legend that money stops buying happiness at $75,000 was computed on this very survey. Plot the whole distribution of well-being instead of its average, and the plateau moves: it belongs to the unhappiest Americans — and to feelings, not judgments.Gallup Daily Poll (2009–2017)

EssaySmiles and Ladders: Where Good Days and Good Lives Come ApartRwanda has some of the world's best days and its worst self-rated lives. Lithuania, the reverse. A map of where good days and good lives come apart.Gallup World Poll · 151 countries

EssayFifty Years of American EveningsSince 1974 the GSS has asked the same four questions: how often do you spend an evening with relatives, with friends, with neighbors — or at a bar? The answers trace a half-century in which company grew rarer and screens grew brighter.GSS (1974–2024)

EssayThe U-Curve of Happiness Is Breaking — at the Young EndFor two generations, happiness sagged in midlife and recovered with age. In the 2020s the curve snapped at its left end: the young are now the unhappiest Americans.GSS

EssayDeaths of Despair vs. Felt DespairLay a decade of Gallup feelings over the county map of suicide, drug, and alcohol deaths, and the measure that tracks mortality best is not sadness or worry — it's physical pain, followed by the belief the future holds nothing better.Gallup US Daily (2008–2017) · CDC

EssayDoes Community Substitute for Connection?Putnam's heirs promised that civic fabric lifts everyone. Three and a half million Gallup interviews ask the sharper question: does it lift the people who need it most?Gallup · 3.5M interviews

EssayHappiness Moved Inside BordersBetween 2006 and 2019 the world got happier and nations grew more alike — yet inside 39 of 42 countries, the gap between the happiest and unhappiest citizens widened.Gallup World Poll (2006–2019)

EssayThe Two Clocks of Growing OldAs people age, the mind's agitations — stress, anger — fall to lifetime lows, while pain and sadness climb. And whether old age is calm or anxious is sorted, above all, by money.Gallup World Poll (2005–2020)

EssayWhat a Year of Life CostsIn Cincinnati, ZIP codes one year of life apart differ by about $18,000 in median home value; in San Francisco, $141,000. The housing market already prices life expectancy.ZIP-level home values & life expectancy

EssayThe Loneliness GeographyLoneliness and depression have opposite geographies: one is young, single, and urban; the other is rural and deprived. A ZIP-code-level map of American isolation.CDC PLACES 2024 · ZCTA

Health

13

Overdoses, mental health, teen drug use and more, down to the ZIP code.

AppThe Health of America’s ZIP CodesA map-first atlas of 26 health and social-need measures across all 32,409 ZIP codes.CDC PLACES + Census

EssayWear and TearYou would expect the map of American disability to be a map of where old people live. It is not — disability nearly doubles from the most to the least advantaged neighborhoods, while the elderly are spread evenly across both.CDC PLACES 2024

EssayThe Flat LineIn deprived neighborhoods people see the doctor just as often — and get far less prevention. The health system manages disease where it could prevent it.CDC PLACES 2024

EssayThe Starting LineIn 2018 an American infant's odds of dying varied threefold by state — from 2.8 per 1,000 in New Hampshire to 8.4 in Mississippi — and rose with the deprivation of the county it was born into.CDC WONDER · Linked Birth/Infant Death (2018)

EssayWhere It Is Deadliest to Be PoorRich Americans live about as long no matter where they live. Poor Americans' lifespans depend on their address — and the places that stretch them are not the places with the most doctors, but the places where fewer people smoke.Health Inequality Project (Chetty et al., JAMA 2016)

EssayThe Coefficient ZooFifty-one regressions per health behavior, 306 small models in all: five behaviors fall with income in every state, but binge drinking rises with it almost everywhere. Money doesn't buy abstinence; it changes the vice.CDC PLACES (tract-level)

EssayThe Slope FactoryWe fit the deprivation–life-expectancy regression separately in 266 American metros. Every single slope came back negative. Many small models, one law.U.S. Census tracts · ADI

EssayThe Great Unwinding: Stress Is the Only Emotion with a Retirement PartyBetween 55 and 70, the emotional weather of American life transforms: stress collapses, worry recedes, enjoyment returns. Stress, it turns out, is the only emotion that gets a retirement party.Gallup

EssayFour Subway Stops, Twenty-Four YearsWithin a single American county, life expectancy at birth can differ by more than two decades. A tract-level tour of New York and Chicago.NCHS USALEEP (2010–2015)

EssayThe Curve That Bent — U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths, 2018–2024For six years the rate of drug overdose death in America rose almost without pause. In 2024 it fell harder than it had ever risen.CDC / NCHS National Vital Statistics System

EssayReading the Population’s Vital Signs — Mental Health at the Emergency Room DoorEvery month, more than 6,900 emergency departments tell the CDC who walked in — and why. Mental health leaves a trace in that stream. Here is how to read it without being fooled.CDC NSSP syndromic surveillance

EssayWithin Reach — Four Decades of How Available U.S. Teens Think Drugs AreEvery year, American high-school seniors are asked a simple question: how hard would it be to get each of these drugs, if you wanted some? Four decades of answers trace the rise and fall of whole drug eras — and end on a striking, broad retreat.Monitoring the Future (1980–2024)

Consumer Finance

2

How American households are doing with money.

EssayFeeling Rich Is Not the Same as Being RichAcross 147 countries, money reliably buys the feeling of financial sufficiency — and the feeling never tops out. But whole regions feel far richer, or poorer, than their income says they should.Gallup World Poll (2016–2020)

EssayThe Peak and the Plateau — A Decade of American Financial Well-BeingFor a decade, Americans felt steadily better about their money. Then 2022 took it back — and the recovery never came.Federal Reserve · Survey of Household Economics (SHED)

Society & Belief

16

Faith, trust, race and family across fifty years.

EssayThe Paradox That Didn't HoldIn the 1970s American women called themselves happier than men. A famous study watched that lead vanish. Extend the data eighteen more years and the decline doesn't continue — it dissolves into noise.GSS (1972–2024)

EssayThe Optimism GapAcross 2.46 million Gallup interviews, Black Americans expect their lives to rise far more than white Americans do at every income level — and the gap is widest among the poor, even though white Americans rate their current lives higher.Gallup (2.46M interviews)

EssayReligion's Conditional DividendAcross 143 countries, people who call religion important rate their lives higher and feel better day to day — but mainly where life is hard. As nations grow richer and safer, the religious advantage bends toward zero, and in the wealthiest places it disappears.Gallup World Poll · 143 countries

EssayOut of Place — The Geography of the LGBT Well-Being GapDaily distress runs high everywhere, but how poorly LGBT Americans rate their lives widens where the county turns Republican and rural — and in those same hostile places, far fewer people disclose being LGBT at all.Gallup US Daily (2012–2017)

EssayKeeping Up With the CountySame paycheck, richer neighbors: across 2.1 million Gallup interviews, living among wealthier people lowers life evaluation for the middle and barely touches the rich — while the poor are unbothered or slightly lifted.Gallup US Daily (2008–2017)

EssayDoes the Ring Still Matter?For fifty years, married Americans have reported being happier than everyone else. The gap has barely budged — and most of it survives even after you account for who tends to marry.General Social Survey (1970s–2024)

EssayDoes Generosity Pay — Everywhere?Across 155 countries, people who give — money, time, or a hand to a stranger — rate their lives higher and feel better day to day. The link holds in rich countries and poor ones alike, and is strongest for giving money.Gallup World Poll (2005–2020)

EssayThe Vanishing CradleAmerica's birth count fell off a cliff when the pandemic hit and, four years later, still has not climbed back. But the baby bust was not one story — some counties lost a quarter of their newborns while a few exurbs gained two-thirds.CDC WONDER Natality (2018–2024)

EssayRaised Poor, Locked UpFor boys raised by poor families, the odds of growing up incarcerated rise with neighborhood deprivation — and, on the very same streets, fall heavily by race.Opportunity Atlas

EssayThe Company You KeepTwenty-one billion Facebook friendships, one question: which kind of social capital actually predicts whether poor children rise? Cross-class friendship does. Volunteering, clubs, and tight-knit networks barely register.Social Capital Atlas (2022)

EssayThe Ninety-Year-Old MapFederal appraisers graded American neighborhoods A through D in the late 1930s. Lay those grades over the 2020 census grid and life expectancy, children's adult incomes, and homeownership still sort by the colors.HOLC maps · 2020 Census

EssayThe Places That Beat the ModelFive census facts predict almost half the variation in neighborhood upward mobility. This story is about the other half — the counties whose poor children climb five or six percentiles higher than their demographics predict, and the sunbelt boomtowns that fall just as far short.U.S. Census · Opportunity Atlas

Economy & Trade

2

Federal Reserve data and thirty years of world trade.

AppChatFREDAsk the Fed's own data anything — plain-English questions over FRED's full economic time-series catalog.FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)

AppWorld Trade AtlasWho trades what with whom — 226 countries, 5,021 products, three decades of bilateral flows.CEPII BACI (1995–2024)

Guns

1

Guns in American life.

EssayHalf the Deaths, a Sliver of the MapHalf of America's gun homicide deaths occur in neighborhood clusters housing about one in ten Americans. Concentration depends on where you draw the box.CDC tract-level firearm mortality · ACS

For AI and research tools

Every essay is also published as Markdown and structured data, so research tools and AI assistants can read the findings and cite the sources.

API documentation Chart components

Sourced
Every figure lists its source and survey years.
Structured
Markdown and structured data for every essay. APIs coming soon.
Current
New essays appear as soon as they’re published.