Decline

The federal government has for the first time detailed the sharp drop in wealth that the Great Recession caused American households ? and it shows that families in California and other Western states took the biggest and broadest hits by far. The average net worth of U.S. households ? the value of their homes, stocks and all other assets ? fell 20% to $481,000 by mid-2009 from $598,000 in mid-2007, according to a Federal Reserve survey released Thursday. In the Western states, 67.5% of households saw their wealth drop, compared with 62.5% for the nation overall.

Precipitation and runoff in California's major river basin will not fall dramatically with climate change, according to a new federal study that shows rising temperatures will have an uneven effect on the West's water supplies. A Department of Interior report released Monday agrees with other analyses that have found climate models are better at predicting temperature rises and an accompanying decline in spring snowpack than they are in projecting future precipitation and stream flow levels.

Is America in decline? Is our global influence waning? Expect that question to get plenty of airtime as the presidential campaign heats up. According to the Republicans, President Obama's fundamental foreign policy problem is that he thinks America is a fading power and all we can hope for is to "manage the decline. " It's a claim that's long been echoing through the conservative blogosphere, and now the campaign trail. John Bolton, who's joined Mitt Romney's foreign policy team, minces no words: Obama "believes that the role of America in the world is to be a well-bred doormat.

The maternity business has experienced a recession, too, it appears. Births fell 4% from 2007 to 2009, the biggest drop for any two-year period since the mid-1970s, according to federal government data released Thursday. The rate, 66.7 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, isn't the lowest in recent memory. The 1997 rate was an all-time low of 63.6. But the authors of the report say preliminary data show the birth rate continued falling through the first half of 2010. The report found: Birth rates fell for all women except those 40 and older.

The steep and steady increase in Cesarean section childbirth finally may have peaked. According to preliminary government data released Thursday, C-section deliveries were down slightly in 2010 -- from 32.8% of all deliveries compared to 32.9% in 2010. The rising C-section birth trend has been roundly criticized because many surgical deliveries are not performed for medical reasons, according to numerous studies. The nation's C-section rate in 1970 was only 5%. Such deliveries cost more and increase the risk of problems in the mother and baby.

A new report that the nation's illegal immigrant population has declined by nearly 1 million has sharpened the debate over whether to legalize those remaining or allow their numbers to shrink through attrition. The number of illegal immigrants living in the United States dropped to 10.8 million in 2009 from 11.6 million in 2008, marking the second consecutive year of decline and the sharpest decrease in at least three decades, according to a report this week by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Drunk driving deaths in California dropped for a third straight year in 2008, the state Office of Traffic Safety said Thursday, but motorcycle fatalities continued a decade-long rise, mirroring a national increase. Overall, traffic deaths dropped by 14% in 2008, to 3,434, the state said, using figures released last month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Alcohol- related deaths accounted for slightly less than one-third of the total, and were down 9.1% -- a slightly smaller decline than for the nation as a whole.

Your story is headed: "An Operatic Decline." I call it "A Journalistic Decline"--a respected newspaper stooping to the level of a scurrilous scandal sheet. Sir Rudolf's illness and mental decline are a personal tragedy, but there is nothing "ignoble" about it. This is not investigative reporting, of which The Times has given us many brilliant and beneficial examples, but snooping of the lowest kind. Ignoble, indeed! THEODORE FRONT Los Angeles