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Trends in public concerns from 1935 to 1984 are traced, based on the Gallup Poll question on the most important problem facing the country, which provides a barometer of both short-term fluctuations & long-term trends. Most notable of the secular trends are: (1) the long-term decline in economic concerns from 1946 to the mid-1960s, & their return to top position by the mid-1970s; (2) the decline of foreign affairs as a concern after withdrawal from Vietnam, & the failure of other foreign policy issues to replace worries over Vietnam; & (3) the sharp rise & fall of civil rights concerns from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s. HA

In a continuation of an examination of important problems in the US (see abstract of Part 1 in this section also), trends on regional, community, & personal most important problem questions are presented. Each reference -- whether national or personal -- tends to elicit distinctive distributions of problems. Certain trends are common across all references (eg, the decline in economic concerns from the 1950s to the mid-1960s) while other changes (eg, in housing & community problems) are unique to the particular reference. 3 Tables. AA

Tracking responses made to the "most important problem" query in Gallup polls since 1935.

Demography, the study of births & deaths, has a profound influence on people & public policy; governments or legislatures seem to have 'precious little influence on such matters.' It should have been possible to predict that the 52% increase in the fourteen to twenty-four age group in the US in the 1960s would have resulted in the overload of institutions, the teenage turbulence in the '60s & '70s, & the unemployment of today. The young people of the future will be paying to support the vastly enlarged number of old people that will exist once the youths of the '60s turn sixty-five; this becomes more alarming with consideration that population is now declining. World reproduction rates are beginning to decline & stability in world population may be achieved by 2010 or 2015. Modified AA.