Sunday, November 7, 1999

These responses are based on a Washington Post poll conducted by random telephone interviews with 1,010 adults conducted October 27-31, 1999. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Field work by ICR/International Communications Research of Media, Pa.

Percent who said each worried them "a great deal":

	1999	1996	1991
1. Insurance companies are making decisions about medical care that doctors and patients should be making	66
2. Children in America are no longer safe at their own schools	60
3. Elderly Americans won't be able to afford the prescription drugs they need	59
4. Because of work and other pressures, parents don't have enough time to spend with their children	56
5. Medical benefits that you and your family now receive will be reduced or eliminated	55	52	52
6. Crime will increase	55	61	69
7. A good college education is becoming too expensive	53	58	65
8. Use of illegal drugs will increase	52	55	68
9. The American educational system will get worse instead of better	51	62	63
10. Pollution and other environmental problems will get worse	51	44	57
11. The number of Americans without health insurance will continue to rise	50
12. More and more good American jobs will be moved overseas, and our workers will be left with the jobs that don't pay enough to live on	50	47
13. There is too much sex and violence in the movies and on TV	49
14. Social Security will run out of money by the time I retire	48	51
15. The Medicare trust fund will run out of money in the next 10 years	47	51
16. More and more countries will come begging the US for economic help, and we'll neglect the people who need help at home	47	47
17. Presidential campaigns are turning into contests over who can raise the most money instead of who would be the best president	46
18. Too many political leaders lack the honesty to tell us what they really think; instead they just follow the polls	46
19. Moral standards of the country are not high enough	46	51	45
20. Illegal immigration is going to overwhelm our borders and we'll see lots more crime, welfare and drug use as a result	46	53
21. Too many people take advantage of the welfare system and don't try to get ahead on their own	45	7
22. American soldiers will be sent into more foreign conflicts such as the one in the former Yugoslavia	42
23. You won't have enough money to live on in retirement	42	48	46
24. Not enough is being done to make it harder to own a gun	41	38
25. Special interest groups have too much influence over elected officials	40	42	47
26. Nobody is looking out for the interests of the middle class	39	43	52
27. Working parents do not have enough good child care options	39
28. The country's elected leaders just don't care about people like you	38	38	49
29. You or a family member might lose their job	36	36	39
30. This country has problems with race relations that are not being addressed or even talked about	35
31. Government is not moving fast enough to adopt school voucher plans which would improve our school system	33
32. Traffic jams and urban sprawl will continue to get worse making daily commuting more and more difficult	33
33. Government will go too far in making homosexuality acceptable	32
34. Americans will not get a tax cut anytime soon	31
35. The good economy will turn sour in the near future	31
36. The federal government will become too involved in setting standards for local schools	29
37. Mothers with young children will be forced off the welfare rolls and won't have any means of surviving	29
38. The United Nations will take control of US foreign policy and we will lose more and more of our sovereignty to international agencies like the UN and the World Trade Organization	29	25
39. Politics is too negative	28	31	32
40. It will become easier for a woman to obtain a legal abortion	28	26	24
41. This is no longer an English-speaking nation; too many people don't know or use the language	25
42. It's becoming too hard for a law-abiding citizen to own a gun	25	22	29
43. We will elect another president who will embarrass the country with scandals while in office	24
44. It will become harder for a woman to obtain a legal abortion	22	26	29
45. The United States doesn't spend enough on its armed forces	22	20	12
46. Labor unions have too much political power	21
47. The religious right has too much political power	19
48. Vouchers for private and religious schools will erode the public school system	18
49. Affirmative action may have gone too far to give some blacks unfair advantages over whites	18	21	19
50. We will shut the door to new immigrants and the dream of a melting pot nation will be lost	17	19
51. The United States spends too much on its armed forces	14	13	21