A majority of Americans support gene editing to deliver direct health benefits for a baby, but many are concerned some uses of the technology would be going too far. More Americans anticipate downsides than upsides from gene editing for babies.

A record number of foreign graduates of U.S. colleges and universities obtained temporary authorization to work in the United States through the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program in 2017, but growth in the once-booming program has slowed dramatically.

In 2017, a record 276,500 foreign graduates received work permits under the OPT program, up from 257,100 in 2016. However, growth has slowed considerably: The number of enrollees grew by 8% in 2017, compared with 34% in 2016. That’s the largest decline in the annual growth rate since 2004. 

Honesty. Strength. Beauty. What traits does society value most in men and in women? And what traits does society say men and women should not have? We asked 4,573 Americans these questions. Here’s what they told us.

Few American homeowners were spared from the broad housing collapse a decade ago, but Generation Xers were hit particularly hard. Yet Gen Xers are the only generation of households to recover the wealth they lost during the Great Recession.

The full wealth recovery of households headed by Gen Xers stems from several factors.

Newspaper layoffs have far from abated in the past year, and digital-native news outlets are also suffering losses.

At least 36% of the largest newspapers across the United States – as well as at least 23% of the highest-traffic digital-native news outlets – experienced layoffs between January 2017 and April 2018. 

After the 2016 presidential election, Facebook users began using the “angry” button much more often when reacting to posts created by members of Congress.

Between Feb. 24, 2016 and Election Day, the congressional Facebook audience used the “angry” button in response to lawmakers’ posts a total of 3.6 million times. But during the same amount of time following the election, that number increased more than threefold, to nearly 14 million. The trend toward using the “angry” reaction continued during the last three months of 2017.

The world’s population is 7.63 billion, according to estimates by the United Nations. More than half of all people around the globe live in just seven countries.

The U.S. public is split in its early views of Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The partisan gap in views of Kavanaugh’s nomination is as large as it has been for any nominee in recent years. 

Democrats are worried he will make court too conservative; among Republicans, 63% say they don’t worry about him shifting the court’s ideology. Most Americans want him to address issues like abortion in his confirmation hearing. 

Read more from our report. 

The gap in the standard of living between Asians near the top and the bottom of the income ladder nearly doubled from 1970 to 2016. Amid rising income inequality overall, Asians displaced blacks as the most economically divided major U.S. racial or ethnic group.

• Read key takeaways from our recent report.
• See how incomes of blacks, Hispanics and Asians compared with incomes of whites in 1970 and 2016.

While terrestrial radio reaches almost the entire U.S. population and remains steady in its revenue, online radio and podcasting audiences have continued to grow over the past decade, according to our latest release as part of our annual State of the News Media report. 

While television remains the most common place for Americans to get their news, local TV news saw its audience decline across most time slots studied this past year. Explore the patterns and longitudinal data in our updated fact sheet, part of our annual State of the News Media report.

More than four-in-ten Americans say Obama is the best or second best president of their lifetimes, compared with about a third who mention Clinton or Reagan. Americans’ views of the best president of their lifetimes are partly tied to their ages.