Introduction
The Household Pulse Survey is a 20-minute online survey, conducted by the Census Bureau, studying how the coronavirus pandemic and other emergent issues are impacting households across the country from a social and economic perspective.
We reviewed survey data from December 29, 2021- January 4, 2023.
Each survey has a 1-4 scale for frequency of anxiety, worry, depression and lack of interest; 4 being the highest.
1: Not at all
2: Several days
3: More than half of days
4: Nearly every day
We found over the course of year anxiety frequency increased.
The highest average being closer to the holidays
The West region of the United States reported higher feelings of anxiety.
The Midwest reported the least.
Do people with kids have higher levels of anxiety?
There was a total of 509,655(70.91%) surveys reported no kids in the household and 209,098(29.09%) kids living at home between the ages of 0-17
We found that 65% people reported feeling anxious nearly everyday did not have any kids.
Does Homeownership impact feelings?
The majority of survey respondents owned a home with a mortgage (308,958), and the fewest live without paying rent (8382). "Rent free" is specified that no one in the home is paying rent, so this includes people experiencing homelessness.
Across all homeownership statuses, feelings of anxiety are experienced more often than feelings of lonely, interest, and down.
People who own their homes outright reported feeling anxiety less frequently than others.
People who both rent and live without paying rent experience the highest instances of anxiety.
Does Race and Gender have a significant impact on reported anxiety?
Asian identifying people have the least anxiety. Asian identifying people have the least anxiety on average.
What is interesting is that black and white identifying peoples have similar anxiety levels.
Mixed race or other identifying people have the highest average anxiety levels.
Average Anxiety by Gender:
This chart is quite telling as it matches with critical gender theories about levels of privilege in society—the more privilege a gender group has, the lower their levels of anxiety. More research is needed to see if there are other contributing factors to this paradigm.
Gender of Survey Respondents:
While the survey was conducted over a random swath of the USA population, the genders do not seem to participate in the survey at equal rates as 57% of respondents are female and 42% are male. This is not representative of the genders of the USA population, which is very close to even between men and women, leading me to the conclusion that women are more likely to agree to participate in the survey than men. In our Anxiety analysis we see that women have higher average anxiety levels than men, and since they participated in the survey at higher rates, we can infer that the data in our analysis is skewed towards women respondents, or away from men.
Sexual Orientation as Percent of USA Population:
This pie graph was from a separate line of inquiry, however I found it interesting and so I wanted to present it briefly. One of the hardest aspects of measuring sexual orientation is that people identify this themselves, so if they are not out to the public, or themselves the data will reflect that.
Summary
We each found that Anxiety was the Highest reported feeling in all categories.
It is common that symptoms of depression increase during winter/holiday months. The Midwest reported the least amount of anxiety.
The majority of survey takers did not have any children and but also reported more anxiety.
People who rent and live without paying rent experience the highest instances of anxiety.
People who identify as Bi-Racial or Race not listed reported higher feelings of anxiety.
The majority of survey takers identify as female.
While only 0.4% of survey takers identify as Transgender, they reported the highest levels of anxiety.