Insights & Analysis
Evidence-based commentary examining where America’s stated values collide with political behavior, public policy, culture, and everyday life.
Eight lenses for understanding moral strain
Browse the latest reporting below or use these themes to understand how each story fits the Index.
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Youth Delinquency: The Early Warning Signal Society Keeps Ignoring
🔒 Crime & Safety ← Back to All Articles After decades of steady decline, juvenile violent crime arrests jumped 9.9% in 2022 compared to…
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Political Polarization: How America Became Two Countries That Hate Each Other
🏛 Civic Life ← Back to All Articles In 2022, 72% of Republicans and 63% of Democrats said the opposing party was more immoral…
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Corporate Ethics Collapse: When Business Stopped Caring About Integrity
🏛 Civic Life ← Back to All Articles One in five American employees reports feeling pressured to compromise their ethical standards at work. 22%…
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Screen Addiction and Childhood: The Developmental Emergency Nobody Declared
🏥 Public Health ← Back to All Articles American children now spend an average of seven to nine hours per day looking at screens…
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America’s Gang Violence Epidemic: The Crisis Cities Don’t Want to Name
🔒 Crime & Safety ← Back to All Articles In certain American neighborhoods, the sound of gunfire is so routine that children no longer…
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Sports Betting’s Explosive Growth and the Addiction Crisis Nobody Planned For
🏥 Public Health ← Back to All Articles When the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, Americans were…
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Elder Abuse in America: The Hidden Crisis in Plain Sight
🔒 Crime & Safety ← Back to All Articles How a civilization treats its most vulnerable members — its children, its elderly, its disabled…
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Road Rage and Traffic Violence: America’s Most Normalized Danger
🔒 Crime & Safety ← Back to All Articles A new AAA Foundation study found that 96% of American drivers admit to aggressive driving…
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40% of American Children Are Now Born Outside of Marriage — Here’s What the Research Says
In 1960, approximately 5% of births in the United States occurred outside of marriage. By 1990, that figure had risen to 28%. Today, it…
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Mass Incarceration: The System That Fails Everyone
🔒 Crime & Safety ← Back to All Articles The United States incarcerates more people than any other country on earth — 1.9 million…
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The Collapse of Social Trust in America
📱 Culture & Media ← Back to All Articles Trust is the invisible infrastructure of civilization. Markets depend on it. Democracy depends on it.…
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Loneliness Epidemic
🫂 Social Decay The Loneliness Epidemic: America’s Invisible Public Health Crisis The Moral Decay Index · May 3, 2026 · 7 min read ←…