Email, Drew DeSilver, senior writer, Pew Research Center, Aug. 19, 2015

6:07 p.m.

I'd specify that the OECD is a common proxy for the world's advanced industrial democracies, and that it seems most appropriate to compare the U.S. to that peer group. (That is to say, it wouldn't make much sense to compare the U.S. to either developing-world democracies or to developed but not-so-democratic countries.)