Lastest Stories by Michael B. Sauter

U.S. high school graduation rates have risen steadily over the past five years, reaching 84% for the 2015-2016 school year. Encouragingly, rates rose across all income levels, and even among groups...
The U.S. Census Bureau celebrates its birthday on August 2. It was 228 years ago, in 1790, that Congress, then in its second year, assigned 350 marshals the responsibility of counting the less than 4...
There are currently 88 wildfires burning across the country in 14 states. Almost 200,000 acres are currently ablaze, an area roughly equivalent to all five boroughs of New York City, combined. In...
Teenagers are often stereotyped as being impulsive, reckless, and prone to risky behavior. The reality is more nuanced — adolescents are generally less likely than adults to risk the contempt of...
Nearly 1.5 million Americans were incarcerated in state prisons in 2016. That same year, U.S. states spent about $58 billion to keep these people locked up. How much each state spends on prisons goes...
In 2015, state governments across the country spent a combined $605 billion on health care, or about $1,880 per resident. The physical and mental well-being of the population is the single largest...
State governments spent close to $39 billion, or about $120 per capita, on retirement funding in 2015. For decades, the funding and distribution of pension funds for state government employees has...