In December 1973, in a Roper survey, 90 percent thought a car was a necessity as did 57 percent a TV and 26 percent home air conditioning. Views about cars haven’t changed, tho as the poll responses below suggest, more Americans now think they can’t live without televisions (64 percent) and air conditioning (70 percent). In a 1983 Roper survey, 4 percent thought a home computer was a necessity. People are divided about cell phones.

For many years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) asked people about their telephone numbers to make it possible for the government agency to recontact individuals about health matters. Starting in 2003, the CDC began including additional questions about whether the phone numbers provided were from a landline or cellular telephones. The CDC figures below are the most up-to-date estimates from the federal government concerning this population. They come from the latter half of 2006.

In general, you might expect that younger groups would be more cell-phone oriented than older ones. But one possible why landlines are more common among 18-24 year olds than among people in their late twenties is that some of those in the younger group live at home with their parents, who are older and usually make the household decisions about phone service.