1980, the number and percentage during the 1980’s
actually declined modestly. In 1989, the number of
affected children was over one million (or 16.8 per-
cent of the minor population). A decade earlier, in
1980, there had been 1.17 million affected children
(or 18.1 percent of the minor population). In 1960,
in contrast, there had only been about 0.46 million
affected children (7.5 percent). By 1989, numerous
social scientists were writing about the social pathol-
ogies associated with large numbers of single-parent
families, of which disproportionate numbers lived
in poverty.
Health and Disease During the 1980’s, there was a
significant decrease in the number of deaths due to
several specific diseases, continuing a trend that had
begun in 1950. The National Center for Health Sta-
tistics reported that 152 persons per 100,000 died of
heart disease in 1990, compared to 202 per 100,000
in 1980 and 307.2 per 100,000 in 1950. The death
rate from malignant cancers, however, increased
slightly during the decade (to 135.0 compared to
132.8). One of the important health indicators was
the infant mortality rate, which was 9.8 infant deaths
per 1,000 live births in 1989. The rate was down from
12.6 in 1980 and 29.2 in 1950. The infant mortality
rate for whites was 8.1 in 1989, whereas it was 18.0 for
African Americans.
The population’s increase in longevity during the
decade was due in part to a decline in the consump-
tion of cigarettes. For 1990, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 25.7
percent of Americans were smokers, compared to
32.1 percent in 1983 and 42.4 percent in 1965.
Among nonsmokers in 1990, 51.6 percent were for-
mer smokers. The CDC attributed about 20 percent
of 1990 deaths to smoking, meaning that smoking-
related diseases were a significant contributor to po-
tential years of life lost. In that year alone, according
to the CDC model, the U.S. population lost more
than five million years of life because of smoking, in-
cluding 1.152 million years for those under the age
of sixty-five.
Although human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
infection was not officially classified as a cause of
death before 1987, it grew rapidly in the United
States throughout the decade. The death rate from
the resulting acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
(AIDS) grew from 5.5 per 100,000 people in 1987 to
13.8 per 100,000 people just six years later. By the
end of the decade, more than 30 per 100,000 people
were infected by HIV, which had become the second-
leading cause of death among Americans aged
twenty-five to forty-four years old. About 80 percent
of those diagnosed with the virus were males older
than thirteen. The infection rate for African Ameri-
cans was about four times higher than that for non-
Hispanic whites. No effective treatment for the dis-
ease had yet been developed, so it almost always
resulted in death within a few years.Employment and Income Unemployment was a
major economic problem throughout the 1980’s,
but the employment rate was particularly high dur-
ing the recession of the decade’s early years. Having
remained at about 7 percent throughout the 1970’s,
the rate shot up to more than 9.5 percent in both
1982 and 1983, reaching a peak of 10.7 percent (11.9
million workers) in November of 1982. With the end
of the recession, the number of people actively seek-
ing work decreased to 6.2 percent of the potential
workforce in 1987 and further decreased to 5.3 per-
cent in 1989. Although this rate was low when com-
pared with that for the twentieth century as a whole,
the country did not achieve full employment (esti-
mated at 4.5 percent unemployment) until the late
1990’s.
Although there was considerable fluctuation in
the unemployment rate during the decade, the ratio
of white to African American unemployment
changed very little. The African American unem-
ployment rate remained somewhat more than twice
as high as the white unemployment rate. For African
Americans, the unemployment rate in 1980 was 12.3
percent, compared with 11.4 percent in 1989. For
white Americans, the comparable rates were 5.1 per-
cent in 1980 and 4.5 percent in 1989.
Between 1980 and 1989, the median income of all
U.S. families increased from $35,839 to $37,950,
which represented no appreciable gain in purchas-
ing power. White families in 1989 had median in-
comes of $49,108, compared with $22,866 for black
families and $26,528 for Hispanic families. That
year, moreover, 10.9 percent of white families had in-
comes below the poverty line, whereas the poverty
rate for African American families was 31.9 percent,
and it was 28.1 percent for Hispanics. Neither Afri-
can Americans not Hispanics had made any progress
toward converging with white median family in-
comes in two decades. The racial disparity was dueThe Eighties in America Demographics of the United States 285