Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 1, 1994 TAG: 9401010035
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
An Associated Press poll found three out of five think the streets in their community will be less safe, and two out of three think racial tensions in the country will increase.
Half think their community will have fewer job opportunities. And only slightly more Americans believe health-care reform will be successful in the coming year than think it will fail.
Sounds pretty pessimistic, but wait.
Twice as many in the poll expect their family finances to get better than get worse. A majority, 52 percent, expect to have more money next year.
For a long time, polls have been finding people more satisfied with their own lives than with the direction society is taking. Looking at all the mood indicators in national polls, including consumer confidence and presidential approval, some analysts see the nation's mood as growing less sour.
"After a period in which the country has been feeling rather badly about itself, it feels better about itself now," said Everett Ladd, director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut.
Ladd says it is possible for this uptick in confidence to co-exist with the deeper fears of crime and racial tension found in the AP poll.
"I'm one of those who chalks a lot of that up to media effects," he said, referring primarily to a drumbeat of crime, violence and racial incidents depicted on TV news and in popular culture.
The poll, taken by ICR Survey Research Group of Media, Pa., part of AUS Consultants, was based on 1,005 telephone interviews Dec. 10-14. It was a time of high national concern about child murders in California and Missouri and senseless gun violence such as that on the Long Island Rail Road.
That case, in which a black man was accused of racially motivated shootings, was unusual. But white Americans clearly perceive resentment among blacks, and it exists not just in the rap music of the young but also among middle-class blacks, said Andrew Hacker, author of the recent book "Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal."
In the poll, 67 percent said they expected racial tension to increase, and 24 percent thought it would decrease.
On crime, 26 percent said they believe the streets in their community will be safer, and 60 percent expected them to be less safe. The numbers, which have a margin of error of 3 percentage points, did not vary significantly by age, sex, income, region or urban-rural status.
"It just shows a general pessimism about crime that has been around since at least the 1960s," said Mark Warr, a sociology professor at the University of Texas who studies public fear of crime.
While pessimism about crime held steady in all age groups in the poll, the optimism about personal finances declined drastically among higher age groups. Those under 55 mostly expected to have more money next year; their elders thought they would have the same or less.
The 18-34 age group was the only one in which a majority thought health-care reform would succeed. Overall, 48 percent thought it would be successful, 43 percent said unsuccessful, and the rest were not sure.
On jobs, 41 percent thought there would be more opportunities in their community, 51 percent expected fewer, and the rest said the number would not change or didn't know.
by CNB