8 Charts Show Where America Stands in the 21st Century

Based on the big news headlines of the past two decades, the 21st century could easily be seen as an unmitigated disaster for the U.S. First came the contested presidential election of 2000, followed quickly by the 9/11 attacks. Then came the debacle of the Iraq invasion and the never-ending war on terror, the housing bust, the financial crisis and the Great Recession. And just when it seemed like the country’s decade of disasters was done, the 2016 election and the presidency of Donald Trump fractured American society in ways that haven’t fully played out yet.

But headlines are not always representative of what’s really going on in a society as large and complex as the U.S. To really get a picture of how the country has done this century, it’s important to look at the deeper underlying trends. Here the picture is decidedly more mixed.