H RPER’ INDEX Rank of “disappointed” among terms used by Americans in an October survey to describe their feelings about the government : 1 Rank of “sucks “sucks”” : 4 Percentage of Americans who say government programs don’t help their families : 54 Portion of American families that received federal bene fits in the past two t wo years : 7/10 Percentage Perce ntage of bills proposed by the la st Congress that became law : 3 Percentage change in spending by independent political groups between the 2006 and 2010 midterm elections : +310 Portion Porti on of these funds in 2010 2010 that came from organizations organi zations not legally required to disclose their donors : 1/2 Percentage Perce ntage of such groups that supported conservative candidates : 80 Estimated percentage of votes cast in Afghanistan’ Afghan istan’ss parliamentary elect elections ions in September that were fraudulent : 23 Portion Portio n of Ukrainian Uk rainian voters in an October survey who said they would be willing to sell their vote : 1/ 1/4 4 Percentage of these people who said they would sell it for less than $65 : 4 47 7 Fee charged by Myanmar’s ruling junta for a candidate to appear on the ballot in November’s national elections : $500 Average annual household income in Myanmar last year : $459 Percentage of Germans who say they would accept a leader with a “strong hand” : 13 Percentage who favor “sharply restricting” Muslim religious practices : 56 Percentage Per centage who support the expulsion of foreigners during periods of high unemployment unemployment : 32 Number of the six Chinese Nobel Nobel Laureates Laureates who were were in prison or living living abroad when when their award award was conferred : 5 Global rank of China’s economy in 2010, measured by GDP : 2 Rank if GDP is calculated on a per-capita basis : 94 Number Num ber of time timess the wo word rd “grow “growth th”” appeare appeared d in an 18-p 18-page age sta statem tement ent rel released eased by worl world d leade leaders rs at at the the last last GG-20 mee meeting ting : 46 Percentage of developing nations whose economies have grown faster than the United States’ since 2001 : 89 Percentage that did so between 1991 and 2000 : 48 Number of countries with which which the United United States has a trade deficit : 77 Percentage Per centage change since 2007 in the amount of venture capital raised annually in the United States : –5 –55 5 Number of offshore oil and gas leases approved approved by the federal government government since since 2005 : 4,603 Number of offshore offshore wind projects projects approved approved since since then : 1 Number of U.S. U.S. states states that provide provide paid leave leave to new parents parents : 2 Percentage of men and women, respectively, who have accessed this benefit : 21, 79 Estimated market price paid by panhandlers in Johannesburg to rent a baby for the day : $3 Percentage of U.S. parents who rank bullying as their greatest fear for their children : 30 Chance that an American teen suffers from a severe emotional or behavioral disorder : 1 in 5 Amount the state of California spent last year on each minor in its juvenile-detention system : $224,712 Amount spent on each student in the Oakland public school system : $4,945 Number of check check-cashing -cashing shops currently currently operating in San Francisco : 1 141 41 Number by by which this exceeds exceeds the combined combined number of Starbucks and McDonald’ McDonald’ss franchises : 42 Estimated number of Californians who hold a medical order to purchase marijuana : 355,000 Tons of marijuana the Mexican government burned in October following a major seizure : 1 148 48 Estimated number of joints that could have been rolled with this much of the drug : 268,000,000 Number Num ber of drug and alc alcoho oholl addi addicts cts wh who o have have been ste sterili rilized zed sin since ce 199 1998 8 in ex exchang changee for for a payme payment nt from a U.S. U.S. chari charity ty : 1,325 Amount the charity pays per sterilization : $300
Figures cited are the latest available as of November 2010. Sources are listed on page 78. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Median income of U.S. men who are single, childless, in their twenties, and live in a city : $26,000 Of women : $28,000 Chance that an unmarried un married American under thirty says mar riage is “becoming obsolete” obsolete” : 1 in 2 Chances that he or she wants to get married : 19 in 20 Percentage of married men and women, respectively, who believe they control the television : 24, 26 Percentage Per centage change in the averag averagee value of an American home since 2006 : –25 Change between 1929 and 1933 : –25.9 Percentage Per centage increase since 2004 in the estimated median household net worth of members of Congress : 22 Percentage of U.S. GDP last year that went to federal job-training and job-search programs : 0.05 Percentage that went to unemployment insurance : 1 Portion of voters in the midterm elections who ranked “spending to create jobs” as their highest priority for Congres s : 2/5 Percentage who said they had an unfavorable view of Democrats : 52 Of Republicans : 53 Estimated number of pigs that could be bought with the money diverted diverted last year to congressional earmarks : 108,200,000 Percentage of the fuel used to power Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer that comes from f rom rendered beef fat : 20 Portion of all calories consumed by U.S. children that are nutritionally empty : 2/ 2/5 5 Maximum number of calories permitted under San Francisco law for restaurant meals th at come with a free toy : 600 Portion of the U.S. population that will have diabetes by 2050, if current trends continue : 1/ 1/3 3 Percentage Perce ntage change since 2008 in the number of confirmed gonorrhea cases in Alaska : + +71 71 Chance that a mammal species declared extinct since 1500 was later rediscovered : 1 in 3 Odds in New York City in 1900 of dying in a horse accident : 1 in 19,000 Odds today of dying there in an automobile accident : 1 in 26,000 Factor by which Joe DiMaggio’s 1950 salary exceeded the mean U.S. family income : 26 Factor by which Derek Jeter’s 2010 salary did : 288 Median income in NY-14, the country’s wealthiest congressional district : $60,099 In NY-16, the country’s poorest : $17,995 Distance between the two, in miles : 0.75 Percentage Perce ntage of the pedestrians stopped in 2009 for random searches in Philadelphia who were black : 71 Percentage of the city’s population that is black : 44 Portion of the stops that didn’t lead to an arrest : 11/12 Miles from land and maritime ma ritime borders that the U.S. Border Patrol Patrol can legally perform warrantless searches : 100 Portion Portio n of all Americans who live within that area : 2/3 Percentage of all Internet networks rerouted to a Chinese telecommunications company last spring : 15 Minutes that U.S. government and military traf fic passed through Chinese servers : 1 18 8 Fine in California for possession of less tha n an ounce of marijuana and for jaywalking, respective respectively ly : $100, $108 Amount spent last year by the U.S. government government to simulate an attack by pot growers g rowers on the nation’s second-largest second-largest dam : $500,000 Number of licensed peyote peyote dealers in Texas Texas : 3 Estimated value of the bulletproof-car market in Mexico : $90,000,000 Average number of times a Canadian apologizes each week : 4 Number of times George George W. W. Bush’s Bush’s memoir refers to to his loss of the 2000 popular vote : 0
Figures cited are the latest available as of December 2010. Sources are listed on page 68. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Estimated percentage percentage change since 2000 in the U.S. defense budget, not including the wars in Iraq a nd Afghanistan : +80 Number of American American civilians civilians who died died worldwide worldwide in terrorist terrorist attacks last year : 8 Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning : 29 Estimated spending by Afghans on bribes last year : $2,500,000,000 Portion of the country’s GDP to which this figure is equivale equivalent nt : 1/ 1/4 4 Average bribe : $158 Percentage Perce ntage of Americans who say they believe the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting : 34 Liters Lite rs of Saddam Hussein’s blood blood used to ink a copy of the Koran completed in 2000 : 24 Price for a cup of ice cream at the Ice Pack, an Iranian-owned dessert franchise, in Baghdad : $2.50 Price for a hamburger at the Freedom Restaurant in the Green Zone : $3 Number of companies companies in which which Senate Armed Services Services Committee Committee staffers are prohibited prohibited from owning stock : 48,096 The senators themselves : 0 Chance that a female West Point cadet was a victim of “unwanted sexual contact” last year : 1 in 10 Percentage of victims who reported such incidents : 1 14 4 Percentage who said they “took care of it” themselves : 65 Estimated number of people caned in Malaysia every year : 10,000 Minimum number of cock fighting-advocacy groups operating in Texas : 3 Number of divorces divorces in Britain in 2009 that were processed processed by Divorce Divorce-Online.co -Online.co.uk .uk : 7,316 Portion Portio n of these in which the word “Facebook” appeared in the court filing : 1/ 1/5 5 Percentage of United Kingdom residents accepted into Oxford University’s undergraduate class last year who are black : 1 Estimated number of U.S. colleges that have Quidditch teams : 81 Percentage of U.S. high school seniors who have smoked a cigarette in the past month : 19 Who have smoked marijuana : 2 21 1 Date on which student loans first passed credit cards ca rds among the largest la rgest sources of private debt in the United States : 6/30/10 Percentage Perce ntage of U.S. households that are sha red by more than th an one family : 13 Minimum number of people living in the flood tunnels tun nels beneath Las Vegas : 300 Portion of single or widowed Americans over 65 who receive all their income from Social Security : 1/ 1/4 4 Amount the U.S. economy loses for each murder committed, according to an Iowa State University study : $17,000,000 Pounds of antibiotics antibiotics produced in the t he U.S. in 2009 that were consumed by humans : 7,275,254 Pounds consumed by animals raised for human consumption : 28,808,023 Estimated number of red-winged blackbirds that fell dead from the sky in Arkansas on New Year’s Eve : 4,500 (see page 80) Estimated percentage of New Hampshire’s bat population that died in 2010 : 65 Number of the four top-spending top-spending congressional congressional candidates in the 20 2010 10 electi elections ons who lost : 3 Percentage Perc entage of all global IPO money last year that was raised in the t he United States : 1 17 7 Years since recordkeeping began in which this figure has been lower : 0 Chance that a U.S. $100 bill is currently held outside the country : 1 in 2 Numberr of suic Numbe suicides ides last year year in one Indian Indian state state that a gov governmen ernmentt invest investigat igation ion attribu attributed ted to to unpaid unpaid micro microfinance debts : 54 Rank, in 201 2010, 0, of the term “austeri “austerity” ty” among the most commonly requested definitions in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary : 5 Of “pragmatic” : 4 Term with the largest percentage gain in number of searches between 2009 and 2010 : “shellacking”
Figures cited are the latest available as of January 2011. Sources are listed on page 65. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Chances that an American describes his or her diet as “healthy” : 9 in 10 Graduates of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board “Masters of Beef Advocacy” program since 2009 : 1,950 Numberr of U. Numbe U.S. S. states states that have have more more pigs pigs than than people people : 3 Radioactivee animal droppings Radioactiv d roppings found in 2009 near nea r the Hanford Han ford nuclear nuclear site in Washington : 3 33 3 Percentage Percen tage change since 2001 in the Alsatian great hamster h amster population : –78 (See page 84) Minimum number of birds that die from crashing into New York York City windows each year : 100,000 Percentage Percen tage of black kite raptors that decorate their t heir nests with white plastic : 82 Maximum occupancy of a Madrid hotel, made entirely entirely from garbage, that th at opened in January Januar y : 1 10 0 Portion of Singaporeans who live in public housing : 4/ 4/5 5 Chance that an American benefits from at least one government antipoverty project : 1 in 6 Amount Santa Barbara proposes to spend moving benches to discourage the homeless from panhandling on them : $50,000 Amount Massachusetts has allocated since 2000 to decrease class size and increase teacher pay : $1,200,000,000 Percentage Percen tage of that allocation that has gone to cover rising health-care costs : 1 100 00 Chances that an American opposes any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or education spending : 6 in 10 Minimum number of U.S. religious facilities that have been foreclosed on since 2008 : 1 195 95 Percentage Percen tage by which books on contemporary ethics are a re more likely than other books book s to be stolen : 50 Minimum cost of a “pl “pleasure easure palace” being built for Vladimir Putin : $1,000,000,000 Number of Bentleys Bentleys purchased in Russia in 2000 and in 2010 2010,, respectively respectively : 0, 113 Rank of Communist China among the “greenest” regimes in history, based on total atmospheric carbon reduction : 1 Of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire : 2 Estimated portion of registered voters in Zimbabwe who are dead : 1/ 1/4 4 Average annual income of an Englishman living at the start star t of the Black Death, adjusted for in flation : $1,300 Of a Haitian at the start of the current cholera epidemic epidemic : $659 Number of hostages hostages taken by pirates last year : 1,181 Years since record-keeping began in which that number has been higher : 0 Number of militias active active in the Unite United d States in 2007 2007 and in 2010 2010,, respectivel respectivelyy : 43, 330 Respective Respecti ve number of states with budget shortfalls in those years : 1, 48 Number of states states that have have applied applied for funding under the 2010 2010 Affordable Affordable Care Care Act : 50 Number that have have joined joined a lawsuit lawsuit challenging challenging the act’s constitutionality constitutionality : 26 Minimum number of U.S. states and territories in which the Army flew unmanned drones last year : 2 21 1 Percentage of Americans aged 18 to 29 who think violence against the U.S. government is justi fied : 1 17 7 Date on which Glenn Beck hypothesized that an attempted assassination of Sarah Palin “could bring the republic down” : 1/10/11 Percentage Per centage of Canadians who support increasing their t heir country’s military presence in the Arctic : 58 Number of American soldiers soldiers who who died in combat combat last year : 45 455 5 Minimum number who committed suicide : 407 Percentage Perce ntage of Ohio voters who think that House Spea ker John Boehner’s Boehner’s willingness to cry is a sign of strength : 36 Average minutes more exercise exercise per week that a heavy drinker gets than t han a non-drinker : 2 21 1 Percentage increase since 2000 in the number of Britons under 30 with alcohol-related liver disease : 53 Chance that a woman undergoing in-vitro fertilization fertilization in Israel becomes pregnant pregna nt : 1 in 5 Chance if she is subjected, before fertilization, to “medical clowning” : 1 in 3
Figures cited are the latest available as of February 2011. Sources are listed on page 57. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Estimated number of feet eastward that Japan’s main island was moved by March’s earthquake : 8 Ratio of the amount of energy generated by the quake to the amount consumed by the United States each year : 1 to 1 Percentage by which Saudi Arabia’s total oil supply might be overstated, according to leaked diplomatic cables : 72 Confirmed number of terrorist plots against the United States perpetrated by Muslims in 2010 : 10 By non-Muslims : 25 Rank of 2010 among the deadliest years for Afghan civilians since the war began : 1 Minimum number of people killed by CIA drone attacks in Pakistan last year : 607 Number of those who appeared on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists : 2 Percentage of the U.S. population that served in the military during World War II : 8.6 Percentage today : 0.5 Amount the Defense Department spent last year on military bands : $317,000,000 Number of midshipmen expelled from the U.S. Naval Academy since October for possessing mood-altering incense : 11 Minimum number of man-made objects orbiting Earth : 22,000 Estimated number of “behavior-detection of ficers” employed by the Transportation Security Administration : 2,800 Estimated number of people these of ficers have flagged for examination under the program : 288,600 Percentage of those examinations that led to an arrest : 0.7 Percentage of the GDP that will be taken as federal revenue this year : 14.8 Last year in which the percentage was this low : 1950 Amount of federal subsidies given to the family farm of Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) since 2001 : $154,755 Chance that a U.S. job created last year was in a low-wage industry : 1 in 2 Percentage of voters in the 2010 midterms who were members of a union household : 17 Percent change in U.S. labor productivity since 1972 : +114 Percent change in wages during that same period : –6 Percent increase in food-stamp usage in 2010 : 13 Chances that a U.S. millionaire does not “feel wealthy” : 2 in 5 Average amount he or she believes would begin to create such a feeling : $7,500,000 Percentage of white Americans who own stocks, bonds, or mutual funds : 49 Of black Americans : 25 Of Hispanic Americans : 16 Percentage of households whose head is nearing retirement age that have 401(k)-type accounts : 60 Chance that such a household has adequate savings to maintain its standard of living i nto retirement : 1 in 10 Estimated amount spent by Britain’s National Health Service to out fit London ambulances for obese patients : $341,000 Minimum amount spent in 2010 treating pet obesity in the United States : $25,000,000 Date on which a U.S. patent was issued for a phone with which pets can call their owners : 2/1/11 Percentage by which an American is more likely than a non-American to suffer from bipolar disorder : 100 Number of the ten most popular prime-time television dramas that regularly feature corpses : 8 Age of the youngest person facing life without parole in the United States : 13 Chance that a 2009 New York City high school graduate was deemed college-ready by the state’s education department : 1 in 4 Average salary difference between a starting New York public school teacher and a first-year private lawyer in 1970 : $2,000 Today : $106,000
Figures cited are the latest availabl e as of March 2011. Sources are li sted on page 82. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Average amount NATO spends each week enforcing the no-fly zone over Libya : $1,930,000 Estimated value of arms sent by NATO countries to Muammar Qadda fi since 1969 : $10,000,000,000 Minimum amount Qaddafi held in U.S. banks at the time his assets were frozen in February : $29,700,000,000 Percentage of Americans in 2009 who believed the free market “is the best system on which to base the future of the world” : 74 Percentage of Americans who believe so today : 59 Percentage of Chinese who do : 67 Minimum number of journalists imprisoned without charges by the U.S. military between 2004 and 2010 : 14 Amount of “blood money” reportedly paid to the families of two Pakistanis killed by a CIA contractor in January : $2,340,000 Number of homes whose mortgages a U.S. advertising firm offered to pay in exchange for converting the homes to billboards : 10 Number of applications the firm received in the first week after making the offer : 11,575 Percentage of Republicans who said in March that they fear that ACORN will steal the 2012 election for Obama : 25 Date on which ACORN shut down : 11/2/10 Number of Congress members who gave up some portion of their 2010 salary for federal debt reduction : 3 Total amount of these gifts : $15,223.56 Number of seconds it takes for the federal debt to grow by that amount : 0.34 Date on which Standard & Poor’s revised its U.S. debt outlook to “negative” : 4/18/2011 Number of times it has previously been anything other than “stable” : 0 Amount of federal money that went to National Public Radio in 2010 : $2,700,000 To Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University : $446,000,000 Percentage by which young adults with high religious participation are more likely than their peers to become obese : 50 Number of Germans who left the Catholic faith last year : 180,000 Date on which National Front leader Marine Le Pen compared Islam in Fra nce to the Nazi occupation : 12/10/2010 Percentage of French people who said they “approved” of the comparison : 39 Amount a Liechtenstein marketing agency charges for fifty people to “rent” the nation for one night : $20,000 Minimum hours that Armenia went without Internet after a Georgian woman cut a cable while scavenging for copper : 5 Number of people added to India’s population in the past decade : 181,000,000 Number of free condoms handed out by the Brazilian government in advance of Carnival this year : 84,740,000 Price for a six-pack of Hotshots, a brand of extra-small Swiss condoms made for adolescent boys : $8.79 Chance that a teenage girl in America has a sexually transmitted infection : 1 in 4 Average age at which women consider themselves “old,” according to a study by a British funeral planning company : 29 At which men do : 58 Percentage of men who said they would start feeling old when music sounded too loud in bars : 22 Chances that a convict will be granted parole if his case comes up right after a judge has had break fast : 7 in 10 Chance right before lunch : 1 in 4 Minimum number of female employees party to a sex-discrimination class-action lawsuit against Walmart : 1,500,000 Percentage change in domestic violence when the local NFL team unexpectedly loses a game : +10 When it loses to a traditional rival : +20 Base hit awarded for each misdemeanor arrest in the Bell County, California, police department’s “baseball game” : double For each felony arrest : home run
Figures cited are the latest availabl e as of April 2011. Sources are li sted on page 63. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Portion of Americans who think the death of Osama bin Laden will make it easier to “win the global war on terror” : 2/5 Portion who thought that the capture of Saddam Hussein would : 3/5 Percentage of Americans who feel safer since bin Laden was killed : 16 Who feel less safe : 14 Percentage likelihood established in a 2009 study by a UCLA geographer that bin Laden was in Abbottabad : 88.9 Date of a classi fied memo, released by WikiLeaks, suggesting he was there : 9/10/2008 Amount bin Laden paid to replace each cricket ball hit into his compound, according to a local boy : $0.59 Length in years of the contract a Dutch soccer team offered a one-year-old boy after seeing him kick soccer balls on YouTube : 10 Chance an item of girls’ clothing sold in the United States has “sexualizing” characteristics, according to a May study : 1 in 3 Percentage by which a person born in the spring is more likely than one born in the fall to become anorexic : 31 Value of currency eaten by termites at a bank in Uttar Pradesh, India, in April : $221,900 Size of India’s annual deficit in female births, based on 2011 census data : 600,000 Estimated number of people in the developing world employed collecting virtual resources for online gamers : 100,000 Chance that a Russian believes the sun revolves around the earth : 1 in 3 Chance that a U.S. high school biology teacher is an advocate of evolution : 1 in 4 Percentage of Mississippians who are unhappy with the outcome of the Civil War : 27 Date on which a Mississippi River–themed museum in Memphis was closed due to the flooding Mississippi : 5/6/2011 Amount FEMA is demanding from natural-disaster claimants to whom it mistakenly gave funding : $21,908,141 Minimum percentage of mortgages in La s Vegas that are cur rently “underwater” : 70 Incidents of suspected mortgage fraud in 2010 : 70,472 Percentage change in such incidents since 2000 : +1,900 Date on which U.S. student-loan debt is expected to reach $1,000,000,000,000 : 12/1/2011 Chance that an American who earned a bachelor’s degree in 2008 will be paying off student loans in 2028 : 1 in 3 Percentage of private-sector workers with pension plans in 1979 whose plans were de fined-benefit : 62 Today : 7 Minimum number of times the calculation of the Consumer Price Index has been “improved” since 1980 : 20 Current rate of in flation, of ficially : 3.2% As measured by the “unimproved” metric : 10.7% Chance that a retiree reports spending more savings than planned to meet basic expenses last year : 1 in 3 Percentage increase since last year in roadside calls to AAA from drivers who have run out of gas : 14 Minimum percentage of U.S. electricity that is consumed by marijuana growers : 1 Percentage of Americans who think the federal government has too much power : 58 That lobbyists do : 71 Amount spent on lobbying in 2000 : $1,600,000,000 In 2010 : $3,500,000,000 Number of public statues of individuals in the United States : 5,193 Number that depict women : 394 Portion of all 800-numbers held by one Philadelphia company that redirects calls to phone-sex lines : 1/4 Opening-weekend box-of fice draw in Hong Kong of Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, a pornographic 3D movie : $1,660,031 Of Iron Man 2 : $1,529,782
Figures cited are the latest available as of May 2011. Sources are l isted on page 69. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Chance that an American believes the country is still in a recession or depression : 1 in 2 Estimated percentage change in chief executive pay at America’s publicly traded corporations in 2010 : +11 Factor by which the likelihood that a father will spank his child increases if the father is depressed : 4 By which women find proud men more attractive than happy men, according to a June study : 3 By which men find happy women more attractive than proud women : 5 Percentage by which a couple is likelier to divorce if one partner has a commute greater than 45 minutes : 40 Percentage change in the number of unmarried cohabitating couples in the United States between 2000 a nd 2010 : +97 Percentage of men and women, respectively, who have been photographed nude, according to a June Playboy poll : 27, 23 Change since 1960 in calories expended during the average workday of an American man and woman, respectively : –140, –120 Percent that working mothers “give” to their employers, according to Donald Trump : 84 Portion of employers who say they conduct criminal-background checks on potential employees : 3/4 Chance that an American adult has a criminal record : 1 in 4 Chance that a U.S. man who has been incarcerated will make it out of the bottom economic quintile within 20 years : 1 in 50 That a man who was never incarcerated will : 1 in 7 Number of Americans serving life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 14 or younger : 73 Percentage change in the number of U.S. whites under the age of 18 in the past decade : –9.8 Blacks : –2.3 Hispanics : +38.8 Percentage of applicants offered undergraduate admission to Har vard this year : 6.2 Percentage of applicants accepted for employment on McDonald’s National Hiring Day in April : 6.2 Estimated percentage of the U.S. college class of 2011 who are moving back home after graduation : 85 Chance that a student in Berlin “could imagine doing sex work” to pay for school : 1 in 3 Average hourly rate he or she imagines charging : $1,300 Members of Malaysia’s Obedient Wives Club, which encourages women to be “good sex workers” to their husbands : 1,050 Percentage of Americans who believe Osama bin Laden was greeted by 72 virgins in heaven, according to a Fox News survey : 3 Percentage who believe he met a “more negative end” : 80 Estimated percentage of Afghanistan’s gross national product that comes from U.S. aid and other foreign sources : 97 Percentage of Egyptians who say that improving economic conditions is “very important” : 82 Who say that honest elections are : 55 Minimum number of punches thrown during a December brawl in the Ukrainia n parliament : 12 Chairs thrown : 2 Amount the Chinese government is paying to create the Robert Mugabe School of Intelligence in Zimbabwe : $98,000,000 Minimum number of goose- and gull-chasing falcons laid off by John F. Kennedy Airport last year : 15 Percentage decrease in tweets by U.S. elected of ficials in the week following “Weinergate” : 28 Rank of “Don’t Know,” “None,” and “Bill O’Reilly,” respectively, among America’s most trusted political journalists : 1, 2, 3 Value of state tax breaks approved in May for a Bible-themed amusement park in Kentucky : $43,000,000 Average percentage by which the French overestimate the Jewish population of France : 655 Percentage of French people who call themselves “somewhat or a little bit” racist : 13 Centimeters by which an electron falls short of being perfectly round : 0.000000000000000000000000001
Figures cited are the latest available as of June 2011. Sources are li sted on page 72. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Average lag, in months, between economic recovery and employment recovery after the nine previous recessions : 10 Projected lag, in months, after this recession : 60 Percentage of the $46 billion allocated by TARP to help homeowners re finance that has been used for that purpose : 4.3 Percentage of Americans who say they have a “great deal” of con fidence in the nation’s banks : 23 In Congress : 12 Number of the 612 races in California’s last four statewide elections in which the incumbent’s party won : 605 Amount paid at a Texas auction for the vanity license plate “ ” : $2,500 For “” : $3,000 For “” : $15,000 Percentage of mortgage-interest-deduction recipients who say they “have not used a government social program” : 60 Of federal student-loan recipients : 53 Of food stamp recipients : 25 Percentage of Americans who say their household couldn’t come up with $2,000 in thirty days : 47 Years it will take lenders in New York State, working at their current rate, to foreclose on all houses currently in default : 61 Percentage change in the likelihood that a U.S. college-educated couple will divorce if housing prices fall by 10 percent : +29 Percentage by which a woman who lost her virginity before the age of 16 is more likely to get divorced later in life : 80 Chance that a child born to a mother with a college degree will be born out of wedlock : 1 in 17 That a child born to a mother without a college degree will : 1 in 2 Percentage by which Americans prefer having boys to girls : 40 Number of U.S. counties in which life expectancy for women is lower than or the same as it was in 1997 : 860 Percentage of Americans who believe pornography is “morally wrong” : 66 Percentage who believe the death penalty is : 28 Percentage of gays in the military who are “out” to at least some of their unit, according to the advocacy group OutServe : 78 Number of members in Iran’s “moral police force,” which is charged with enforcing national dress codes : 70,000 Number of health-care workers arrested in Bahrain for tending to the wounds of antigovernment protesters : 48 Chance that a Pakistani approves of the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden : 1 in 10 Number of suspected leakers of classified information who have been prosecuted since Obama took of fice : 5 Number who were prosecuted under the Nixon Administration : 2 Date on which the federal government declassi fied the Pentagon Papers : 06/13/2011 Date on which rinderpest became the second disease of ficially eradicated from the earth : 6/28/2011 Price for which the head of St. Vitalis of Assisi, the patron saint of genital disease, was sold at auction in May : $5,000 Value of public-health benefits for every dollar spent on pollution control, according to the EPA : $30 Percentage by which the risk of type 2 diabetes increases for every two hours a day that a person watches television : 20 Estimated percentage change in the abuse of a ntianxiety drugs in the United States since 9/11 : +176 Number of the 48 wrestlers who participated in 1991’s WrestleMania who are now dead : 13 Hours more media consumed each day by the average minority youth than by the average white youth : 4.5 Percentage of U.S. video-game players who are over the age of 50 : 29 Last day on which ancient Greek was taught at Michigan State University : 4/29/2011 Date on which Greek “rush week” begins for the Michigan State Spartan s : 9/11/2011
Figures cited are the latest availabl e as of July 2011. Sources are li sted on page 72. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Percentage of the current U.S. debt that was accumulated during Republican presidential terms : 71 Portion of debt-ceiling elevations since 1960 that have been signed into law by Republican presidents : 2/3 Percentage of profits American corporations paid in ta xes in 1961 : 40.6 Today : 10.5 Portion of the increase in U.S. corporate pro fit margins since 2001 that has come from depressed wages : 3/4 Percentage of Americans who say they did not have money to buy food at all times last year : 18.2 Percentage change in the median household wealth of white families since 2005 : –16 Of Hispanic families : –66 Number of minors sent back to Mexico by U.S. immigration authorities in 2010 : 20,438 Percentage who were sent unaccompanied by an adult : 57 Percentage of the world’s population that could fit in Texas by living with the population density of New York City : 100 Estimated value of government subsidies that will go to the oil a nd gas industries between now and 2015 : $78,155,000,000 Average amount the tooth fairy left for a tooth in 2010, according to a survey by Visa : $3 Average so far in 2011 : $2.60 Price for an iPad case made out of Bernie Madoff’s Polo Ralph Lauren blue chinos : $350 Percentage of millionaires who said in a July survey that they are concerned about global unrest : 94 Percentage of Egyptians who say they want the new government to amend or abandon the Camp David accords : 70 Estimated number of Syrians killed during pro-democracy protests since March : 1,700 Number of people killed in Ecuador since July by bootleg liquor : 35 Portion of the Indian Ocean that is underexplored by scientists because of pirates : 1/4 Amount an unemployed Utah man is charging for the opportu nity to hunt and kill him : $10,000 Portion of non-interest federal spending that is dedicated to programs for the elderly : 1/3 Chance that a person will remember something if he thinks he can look it up later : 1 in 5 If he thinks he cannot : 1 in 3 Percentage of U.S. college grades that are A’s : 43 Portion of America’s college students who attend for-pro fit schools : 1/10 (see page 51) Portion of federal financial aid that goes to such schools : 1/4 Portion of college students who believe alcohol improves their ability to tell jokes : 3/4 Who believe it improves their sexual encounters : 1/3 Percent increase in armed robberies at pharmacies since 2006 : 81 Chance that an American fast-food customer uses posted calorie information to ma ke food-buying decisions : 1 in 6 Number of states in which less than 20 percent of adults are obese : 0 Percentage of private-sector workers who believe that public-sector workers receive better bene fits : 60 Percentage of public-sector workers who believe this : 44 Percentage of Americans who believe China has passed or will pass the United States as the world’s leading superpower : 46 Percentage of Chinese who do : 63 Of French : 72 Percentage of Americans who say they would vote for a well-quali fied homosexual candidate for president : 67 For a well-quali fied atheist : 49 Percentage of Americans in a July poll who said they approve of God’s job performance : 52
Figures cited are the latest available as of August 2011. Sources are listed on page 68. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Number of the 100 highest-paid American CEOs who earned more than their employers paid in taxes last year : 25 Date on which the Lake Erie Correctional Institution became the first U.S. state prison sold to a private company : 8/31/2011 Amount the Corrections Corporation of America paid the State of Ohio for the prison : $72,700,000 Percentage of U.S. Postal Service expenses t hat go to labor costs : 89 Of FedEx and UPS expenses, respectively : 41, 48 Percentage of Americans who disapprove of a de ficit-reduction plan with no tax increases : 60 Amount of the 2009 stimulus package that the federal government has yet to spend : $127,000,000,000 Estimated annual cost to the U.S. economy of worker “disengagement” : $400,000,000,000 Estimated annual cost of r ust and other corrosion to t he Defense Department each year : $23,000,000,000 Estimated percentage of Americans aged 17 to 24 who are ineligible to join the military : 75 Respective rank of obesity, drug and alcohol problems, and low “aptitude” among the most common reasons for ineligibility : 1, 2, 3 Date on which WikiLeaks announced “pre-litigation action” against the Guardian newspaper for leaking information : 9/1/2011 Number of chopsticks made each day by Georgia Chopsticks in Americus, Georgia, for use in China : 2,100,000 Percentage increase in the number of Chinese students applying to U.S. graduate schools this year : 21 Portion of unemployed people in the United States who are covered by primary unemployment insurance : 1/4 Percentage change since 2001 in applications for Social Security disability bene fits : +50 Number of Americans currently receiving them : 13,600,000 Year by which the program will be unable to pay bene fits, according to congressional estimates : 2018 Chances that a U.S. corporation is considering ending health benefits when federal insurance exchanges begin : 3 in 10 Percentage of all oxycodone sold to doctors in the U.S. last year that went to Florida : 89 Date on which Florida began requiring potential welfare recipients to pass a drug test before receiving benefits : 7/1/2011 Percentage who have failed the test : 2.5 Estimated amount this will save the state over the next year in denied bene fits : $98,000 Amount that Rick Perry has received in federal farm subsidies : $72,687 Number of the top 50 donors to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns who received an appointment to a state post : 22 Percentage increase in the sales of luxury goods within the United States in the past year : 7.3 Number of “designer vagina” operations paid for by the British National Health Service last year : 2,000 Percentage of women seeking the procedure who were deemed to have “normal” genitalia in a 2010 study : 100 Minutes of television that the average British dog watches each day : 50 Number of times the average British man will fall in love, according to an August study : 3 Number of times the average British woman will : 1 Percentage change in the gap between the wages of U.S. men and women since 1998 : +9 Amount by which a typical good-looking U.S. worker will out-earn a typical ugly one over a lifetime : $230,000 Estimated amount that discrimination against the ugly costs America each year : $20,000,000,000 Percentage of cell phone owners who admit they have pretended to be on t he phone to avoid talking to someone in person : 13 Percentage of female scientists who say they have fewer children than they wanted because of their careers : 45 Percentage of male scientists who do : 25 Date on which Joe Walsh (R., Ill.) said Washington can’t put “one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids” : 7/13/2011 Amount that Walsh currently owes in back child support : $98,422 Last year in which the U.S. government did not “do everything wrong,” according to Ron Paul : 1987 (or possibly 1988)
Figures cited a re the latest availabl e as of September 2011. Sources are l isted on page 77. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Percentage decrease in the median U.S. household income during the “Great Recession” : 3.2 During the subsequent “recovery” : 6.7 Portion of income growth since the end of the recession that has gone to cor porate profits : 9/10 Minimum number of pigs stolen in Minnesota this September : 744 Amount the Emergency Homeowners’ Loan Program returned to the Treasury after its allocation deadline passed : $568,000,000 Minimum amount the U.S. government overpaid for federal services in 2010 : $26,000,000,000 Percentage by which the average contracted project costs the government more than the equivalent government-run project : 83 Estimated percentage of U.S. public schools that will fail this year under t he standards set by No Child Left Behind : 82 Chance that a school has lowered its proficiency standards to inflate test scores since 2005 : 1 in 2 Price the Berkeley College Republicans charged white men for baked goods at their September “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” : $2 Price they charged black men : $0.75 Date on which Governor Rick Scott said that Florida doesn’t need “more anthropologists” : 10/10/2011 Date on which Scott’s daughter received her anthropology degree : 1/11/2008 Rank of the U.S. Congress among world legislatures for gender parity : 89 Portion of U.S. mothers who read People magazine : 1/3 Percentage of Americans who say news organizations “hurt democracy” : 42 Chance that an American between 18 and 24 has read a book in the past year that wasn’t required for school or work : 1 in 2 Portion of the “Millennial Generation” that is “absolutely certain” God exists : 2/3 Rank of non-denominational Christianity among the fastest-growing religions in America during the past two decades : 2 Rank of “none” : 1 Number of Bibles that have been to the moon : 100 Number of messages in bottles sent out by one resident of Prince Edward Island since 1996 : 5,230 Number of responses he has received : 3,201 U.S. patent number assigned to a device for building the perfect snowman : 8,011,991 Number of codes in the current nationwide system for describing medical services on insurance bills : 17,849 Number in the new federally mandated system : 141,058 Code number for “crushed by alligator, initial encounter” : W5803XA For “crushed by alligator, subsequent encounter” : W5803XS Odds a West Virginia driver collided with a deer in the past year : 1 in 53 Date on which Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, unveiled a sculpture commemorating the Beatles’ 1964 visit there : 9/18/2011 Hours that the Beatles spent in the town : 1 Date on which the Chinese city of Chaohu was “canceled” by government decree : 8/22/2011 Percentage of Icelanders who believe that the existence of elves is “probable” or “certain” : 25 Number of Italian earthquake experts currently on trial for manslaughter for downplaying the risk of a 2009 earthquake : 7 Percentage of the vote received by the Pirate Party in Berlin’s September municipal elections : 8.9 Number of sex dolls distributed to SS soldiers by Heinrich Himmler, according to a book released this September : 50 Number of Afghan army battalions currently able to fight without coalition support : 0 Number of “major threats” the Transportation Security Administration has detected in the decade since its creation : 0 Portion of adults under thirty who think Hollywood is a threat to their values : 1/3 Minimum number of times Newt Gingrich has seen The Hangover : 7
Figures cited are the latest available as of October 2011. Sources are listed on page 86. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Number of letters from Americans President Barack Obama reads each evening : 10 Number of staffers in the Correspondence Of fice responsible for selecting those letters from the 11,000 received each day : 7 Number of states that have delayed filling judicial vacancies for budgetary reasons : 34 Amount employees of private-equity firm Bain Capital have donated to the campaign of its co-founder Mitt Romney : $69,500 To the Obama campaign : $119,900 Date on which Obama said that donations from lobbyists “don’t contribute to the public interest” : 8/4/2007 Minimum amount Obama’s 2012 campaign has so far accepted from bundlers connected to lobbyists : $2,800,000 Amount former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf paid a lobbying firm for access to top U.S. lawmakers : $175,000 Number of U.S. senators he met on a single day within a month of signing the contract : 6 Percentage of Republicans who say the current economic order “favors a very small portion of the rich” : 62 Percentage increase in total congressional net worth since 2008 : 24 Chance that a member of a U.S. corporation’s compensation committee is someone the CEO considers a “friend” : 1 in 3 Portion of New Yorkers making more than $100,000 a year who support Occupy Wall Street : 3/5 Percentage of all Americans who consider themselves part of the top 1 percent of U.S. earners : 13 Percentage of Hispanic Americans who do : 28 Chance an American thinks it is at least “partly true” that secret government airplanes release chemicals into the air : 1 in 7 Number of tickets Virgin Galactic has sold for spaceflights it hopes to begin launching by the end of the year : 460 Amount the Defense Department has requested for new Gray Eagle and Reaper drones and parts in 2012 : $1,908,600,000 Minimum number of U.S. colleges that offer courses in unmanned-drone operation : 5 Portion of the Veterans Health Administration’s budget devoted to veterans with mental-health or addiction problems : 1/3 Factor by which a person experiencing long-term unemployment is more likely to report a first instance of mental illness : 3 Percentage of workers with only a high school diploma who received employer-based health insurance in 1979 : 70 Percentage of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher who receive it today : 66 Chance that a U.S. worker is of normal weight and without a chronic health problem : 1 in 7 Number of working-age people for every person over sixty-five worldwide in 1950 : 11.7 Number today : 8.6 Projected number in 2050 : 3.9 Number of people deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the 2011 fiscal year : 396,906 Rank of that number among the highest in the agency’s history : 1 Percentage of Americans who believe it is “extremely important” to halt the flow of illegal immigrants at the border : 53 Who believe that illegal immigrants already in the country should be allowed to stay and become U.S. citizens : 64 Minimum number of weapons confiscated from visitors to the Statue of Liberty la st year : 11,448 Estimated tons of debris from the Japanese earthquake headed for the West Coast of the United States : 5,000,000 Date by which the debris is expected to begin reaching shore : 10/1/2013 Percentage of Chinese and Americans, respectively, who struggled to pay for food in 2008 : 16, 9 In 2011 : 6, 19 Estimated number of stray dogs killed in Ukraine in preparation for the Euro 2012 soccer tournament : 27,000 Sale price for five frozen straws of semen from Gladiator’s Hammer, a breeder deer, at a Texas auction last August : $21,000 Chances that a top brand of imported extra-virgin olive oil is not extra-virgin : 3 in 4 Maximum years in jail a new bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy proposes for the selling of fake Vermont maple syrup : 5
Figures cited a re the latest availabl e as of Novembe r 2011. Sources are li sted on page 78. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Number of members of Congress among the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans by net worth : 57 Average annual tax savings for members of the top 1 percent of ear ners under the Bush tax cuts : $66,384 Average annual income for the other 99 percent : $58,506 Factor by which an American is more likely to cite unemployment than the de ficit as the country’s “most important problem” : 3 Factor by which a wealthy American is more likely to cite the de ficit than unemployment : 3 Chance a Florida Republican thinks the party is intentionally “stalling” the economy to prevent Obama’s reelection : 1 in 4 Number of jobs lost by African-American women during the recession : 233,000 During the first two years of the recovery : 258,000 Percentage of former NFL players who experience financial distress within five years of retirement : 86 Estimated number of jobs created by every $1,000,000,000 of military spending : 11,000 By the same amount devoted to education : 27,000 Portion of states that allow children to take all their classes online : 3/5 Number of students enrolled full-time in “cyberschools” : 250,000 Minimum global population of robots, excluding toys a nd household appliances : 1,107,000 Minimum amount by which Facebook is overvalued, according to a November study : $70,000,000,000 Percentage of U.S. children age two or younger who have an online presence : 92 Percentage decrease in birth weight when the first trimester of a U.S. pregnancy occurs during an economic downturn : 4 Amount by which sales of ADHD medications increased between 2006 and 2010 : $3,400,000,000 Rank of hydrocodone among the most prescribed d rugs in the United States : 1 Factor by which U.S. deaths due to painkiller overdoses increased between 1999 and 2008 : 4 Estimated percentage of comatose patients diagnosed as “vegetative” who are actually “minimally conscious” : 40 Cost of a pack of cigarettes delivered to a gravesite at a Vietnam cemetery through an online ancestor-worship service : 71¢ Minimum number of Tibetan monks and nuns who self-immolated last year in protest against Chinese rule : 12 Average number of U.S. veterans who commit suicide each day : 18 Percentage of Americans who believed “our culture is superior to others” in 2002 : 60 Who believe this today : 49 Factor by which the number of Americans age ninety and over has increased since 1980 : 3 Projected percentage increase in food production required by 2050 in order to sustain the world’s population : 70 Portion of the world’s land considered “highly degraded” due to soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and water pollution : 1/4 Percentage of Americans who believed in anthropogenic global warming in 2001 : 75 Today : 44 Percentage change since 2006 in the value of U.S. residential land : –70 In the value of U.S. cropland : +18 Amount U.S. millionaires received in federal land-preservation grants for ranches and estates in 2009 and 2010 : $89,000,000 Percentage of California residents who were born in the state, according to the last census : 53 Number of previous decades on record in which a majority of Californians were native born : 0 Number of states in which adultery is a criminal offense : 22 Number of reservations White Castle expects nationwide for its candlelit Valentine’s Day dinner : 6,400 Amount Tampa’s Penthouse Club spent on renovations to prepare for the Republican convention : $1,000,000 Chance that a page in Michele Bachmann’s memoir contains an exclamation point : 1 in 3
Figures cited are the latest available as of December 2011. Sources are listed on page 64. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Percentage of political ad spending during 2010 elections that would have been prohibited before Citizens United : 72 Percentage increase since 2009 in investment fraud targeting adults over 50 : 100 Age at which a typical person’s financial decision-making ability peaks : 53.3 Amount in BP oil-spill recovery funds spent this winter on a prom for senior citizens in Panama City Beach, Fla. : $166,000 Number of its 1,875 streetlights the city of Highland Park, Mich., has stopped illuminating in the past year to cut costs : 1,387 Amount of Homeland Security funds spent in Michigan last year on Sno-Cone machines : $6,279 Cost of an IED-resistant “Tactical Protector Vehicle” purchased by the Fond du Lac, Wis., Sheriff’s Department : $220,000 Estimated number of parking spaces per ca r in the United States : 3 Width, in feet, of the narrowest home in New York City : 9.5 Cost of a 50-square-foot storage unit in the basement of the One57 building on West 57th Street in Manhattan : $200,000 Median sale price of a single-family U.S. home sold last year : $166,200 Years by which the average life span of a homeless person is shorter than the overall average : 30 Number of U.S. home sales double-counted by the National Association of Realtors between 2007 and 2010 : 2,970,000 Annual savings the U.S. Mint estimates will result from aborting its efforts to circulate $1 coins : $50,000,000 Factor by which the average white resident of the District of Columbia out-earns the average black resident : 3 Rank of D.C. among urban U.S. school districts with the widest achievement gap between black and white students : 1 Factor by which a black American is more likely than a white one to use Twitter : 2.4 Percentage of the world’s Christians who lived in sub-Saharan Africa in 1912 : 1 Today : 24 Number of Predator drones patrolling the U.S. border with Mexico : 6 Minimum number of persons whose remains the U.S. Air Force dumped in a land fill between 2003 and 2008 : 274 Number of U.S. servicepeople dismissed for pre-existing “personality disorders” between 2002 and 2007 : 22,656 Amount that each dismissal saves the federal government in annual treatment costs : $13,890 Percentage increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States in 2010 : 50 Estimated amount of money Hezbollah laundered through U.S. used-car dealers between 2007 and 2011 : $329,552,000 Date on which Saudi Arabia last executed a woman for sorcery : 12/12/11 Number of contestants in an elephant beauty pageant held in Sauraha, Nepal, in December : 5 Percentage increase since 2001 in female participation in target shooting in the U.S. : 46.5 Percentage of Americans who have been arrested by the age of twenty-three : 30 Chances that a U.K. diaper-changing table carries trace amounts of cocaine, according to a 2011 Guardian Media study : 9 in 10 Estimated number of methamphetamine labs busted in Missouri in 2011 : 2,000 Percentage of bypass-machine doctors who admitted to tal king on cell phones during heart surgery in a 2010 survey : 55 Amount Miami’s Miller School of Medicine pays female “professional patients” for each student breast or pelvic exam : $40 Amount it pays males for each genital or rectal exam : $30 Chances that an employed American works in the service industry : 6 in 7 Rank of the Mafia among Italy’s largest lending institutions : 1 Rank of Goldman Sachs employees among the largest fu nding sources for Mitt Romney’s campaign : 1 For Obama’s 2008 campaign : 2 Percentage of Americans who believe that the population of the United States exceeds one billion : 28 Who believe that Mitt Romney’s first name is “Mittens” : 2
Figures cited are the latest available as of January 2012. Sources are listed on page 64. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Average balance of a U.S. 401(k) account in 1998 : $62,000 Average balance today : $45,000 Percentage of all U.S. 401(k) accounts that are worth less than $10,000 : 46 Chance that an employed American over 65 says that he or she works out of a need for money : 1 in 6 Amount of stimulus money spent for each job the Obama Administration claims to have created or saved : $250,000 Average number of minutes unemployed Americans are spending looking for a job each day : 18 Number of applications a weekly newspaper in Denver received for its job of medical-marijuana reviewer : 249 Number of Minneapolis’s eleven mayoral candidates in November who listed their party af filiation as “Is Awesome” : 1 Minimum number of House candidates in Florida this year who are ru nning as Whigs : 3 Amount that a Florida attorney spent in 2008 on the cake for Governor Charlie Crist’s birthday party : $52,000 Number of party fund-raisers President Obama has attended since taking of fice : 26 Number George W. Bush attended during his first year as president : 6 Date on which Obama tied Bush for the number of rounds of golf played while in of fice : 10/25/09 Date on which a Goldman Sachs vice president of “business intelligence” became the head of enforcement at the SEC : 10/13/09 Chance that a Guantánamo detainee has been cleared for release or transfer but remains in prison there : 1 in 2 Number of America’s 93 federal prisons where sexual abuse or misconduct by employees has been reported since 2001 : 92 Number of tickets Dallas police of ficers have issued since 2006 for not speaking English : 39 Factor by which the total fees to become a U.S. citizen today exceed those in 1989 : 5 Percentage of Americans who think that “most Americans do not live up to their responsibilities” as citizens : 68 Percentage change since 2008 in the number of formal neighborhood-watch groups in the United States : +40 Estimated percentage change since 2007 in the U.S. market for technology to monitor employees and workplaces : +43 Number of “Confucius Institutes” the Chinese government has established at U.S. universities to spread Chinese ideas : 61 Number of different levels of allegiance to Kim Jong Il that North Koreans are classified under : 3 Portion of the population that is classi fied at the lowest level, “complex” : 1/4 Number of its three Icelandic locations that McDonald’s closed in October, citing a “complex operational environment” : 3 Tons by which U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions would be reduced if our obesity rate were cut to 3 percent : 185,000,000 Tons of CO2 that All Nippon Airways expects to save per month by asking passengers to use the bathroom before boarding : 4.2 Factor by which the carbon footprint of a German shepherd exceeds that of a n SUV : 3 Estimated annual cost of the security detail that the will of hotel magnate Leona Helmsley provided for her dog : $100,000 Number of bottles of champagne currently held in reserve by local producers : 1,215,000,000 Ratio of the total explosive energy of opening this many bottles to that from a ton of TNT : 4:1 Factor by which the current global species-extinction rate exceeds what ecologists consider the “natural” rate : 100 Number of members of the Amazonian Akuntsu tribe in 1995, when it was first contacted by the Brazilian government : 7 Number today : 5 Date on which the fifty-millionth man-made chemical was registered : 9/7/09 Number of registered drug-company lobbyists in Washington, D.C., for every member of Congress : 2 Average amount spent on congressional lobbying, per day, by U.S. health-care companies in 2009 : $1,500,000 Average amount the U.S. government spends on each child during his or her first eighteen years : $140,000 Chance that a U.S. child reports having been assaulted in the past year : 1 in 2 Percentage of these children who were assaulted by siblings : 63
Figures cited are adjusted for in flation and are the latest available as of November 2009. Sources are listed on page 56. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Number of executives at Wall Street banks so far who have been tried on criminal charges related to the financial crisis : 2 Number acquitted : 2 Percentage tax rate that Goldman Sachs paid on its pro fits for year 2008 : 0.6 Average profit that films with budgets over $100 million have generated since 2007 : $348,000,000 Estimated percentage change since 2007 in the average tabloid payout for a celebrity photograph : –30 Number of architects nominated to design the 2010 “New American Home” for an annual home-builders’ convention : 3 Portion of the home completed by November, when the builder ran out of money : 3/4 Chance that a child in the United States will be on food stamps at some point during his or her upbringing : 1 in 2 Price last fall for which a North Carolina middle school allowed students to buy extra credit points on any test : $20 Factor by which the average time a 15-to-19-year-old U.S. girl spends doing housework each day exceeds that of a boy : 2 Percentage of Americans who think that women are more “intelligent” and “honest” than men, respectively : 38, 50 Percentage who think they make better political leaders : 6 Portion of men whose attractiveness is judged by U.S. women to be “worse than average” : 4/5 Portion of women about whom U.S. men say this : 2/5 Number of five-star and one-star reviews, respectively, given to Sarah Palin’s memoir on Amazon.com : 355, 213 Number of two-, three-, and four-star reviews combined : 65 Percentage of Republican voters who say they would seriously consider voting for Palin for president : 65 Percentage who think she is qualified for the job : 58 Percentage of Republicans who believe President Obama was “legitimately” elected : 27 Percentage of Fox News viewers who say the network is “mostly liberal” : 17 Number of the thirteen states most heavily backing John McCain in 2008 that have Democratic governors : 7 Number of the ten states most heavily backing Obama that have G.O.P. governors : 5 Percentage of the California state budget in 1979 that went to higher education and prisons, respectively : 15, 3 Percentage today : 12, 10 Chance that a would-be enlistee to the U.S. military aged 17 to 24 is rejected because of a criminal record : 1 in 20 Chance that he or she is rejected because of physical unfitness : 1 in 3 Estimated number of U.S. veterans under 65 who died in 2008 because they lacked health insurance : 2,266 Factor by which this exceeds the number of U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq a nd Afghanistan last year : 5 Estimated percentage change in U.S. GDP by 2011 that would be caused by ending the Afghan war today : –0.4 Chance that an Afghan reports having been tortured during his or her lifetime : 1 in 5 Number of Cubans convicted in Guantánamo province last February of being in an unemployed “state of dangerousness” : 35 Length, in minutes, to which Hugo Chávez called upon Venezuelans last fall to limit their morning showers : 3 Portion of all U.S. freshwater used each year that goes toward making food Americans waste : 1/4 Percentage of all food in the U.S. supply chain that is wasted : 40 Ratio of the minimum number of medical-marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles to the number of Starbucks : 4:1 Percentage of Americans under 35 who say they text, tweet, or check their Facebook pages right after sex : 36 Percentage of women using the “withdrawal” method of contraception who will get pregnant within a year : 4 Percentage of women who will if their partners use condoms : 2 Chance that a female U.S. street prostitute during any given week will be arrested by a police of ficer : 1 in 67 Chance that she will have sex with a police of ficer : 1 in 33
Figures cited are the latest available as of December 2009. Sources are listed on page 60. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Percentage of Americans last fall who said the United States should “mind its own business internationally” : 49 Number of years since the poll began in 1964 that this number was so high : 0 Percentage of Americans who think torture is “sometimes” or “often” justi fied to gain information from terror suspects : 54 Chance that a name currently on the U.S. terrorism watch list also appears on t he “no-fly” list : 1 in 117 Earliest year that Afghanistan will b e able to pay for its own internal security, according to President Hamid Karzai : 2024 Age at which Muslim children can be radicalized, according to a memo last fall from a U.K. counterterrorism of ficial : 4 Number of Islamic minarets in Switzerland, which banned the construction of new ones in November : 4 Number of times last year that any of them broadcast a call to prayer : 0 Date on which a Swiss nationalist youth group broadcast a call to prayer in Geneva, to stimulate support for the ban : 11/7/09 Percentage of non-Muslim Americans who know a Muslim : 45 Percentage of South Koreans who say they have never knowingly spoken to a foreigner : 42 Days that North Korea gave its citizens last November to exchange all their currency for new notes : 7 Maximum value of the currency they were allowed to trade in, as estimated by recent black-market values : $30 Percentage of Chinese government of ficials who said last November that their health was “not too good” : 98 Percentage increase in the price of garlic in China since March 2009 : 286 Date on which China’s first state-owned gay bar opened : 12/20/09 Chance that a female same-sex couple in the United States is currently raising a child : 1 in 4 Percentage of U.S. public grade-school teachers who say they buy food for hungry students every month : 63 Average number of words consumed each day by a U.S. adult during his or her leisure time : 105,000 Projected percentage decline in U.S. job listings for tenure-track language a nd literature professorships this year : 37 Total percentage decline in those disciplines since 2001 this will represent : 51 Number of U.S. university presidents who currently earn more than $1 million per year : 24 Number who did in 2002 : 0 Total annual revenue of the management-consulting industry worldwide : $300,000,000,000 Percentage of French people who say that “capitalism is fatally flawed, and a different economic system is needed” : 43 Percentage of Americans who had a high opinion of France in 2003 and 2009, respectively : 29, 62 Chance that the U.S. economy will reenter recession in 2010, according to the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics : 1 in 4 Percentage of the 780,000 mortgage modifications that have been made permanent so far under a federal program : 8 Percentage that the Obama Administration has said are supposed to become permanent : 57 Percentage of U.S. workers aged 22 to 33 who said in 2008 they hoped to stay with their employer until retirement : 14 Percentage who said this last year : 25 Portion of all U.S. jobs lost during this recession attributable to cuts from small businesses : 3/5 Change in the average number of minutes an American man spends watching TV each day when he becomes unemployed : +74 Change in the average number of minutes of child care he performs : –3 Number of Americans who pay for DNA tests each year to determine their children’s paternity : 400,000 Percentage of American men aged 18 to 29 who believe that standing up dur ing sex is an effective form of contraception : 18 Percentage of population growth India’s health minister says can “be reduced through TV,” because watchers “fall asleep” : 80 Percentage by which the average bust size of a Playboy Playmate of the Year is larger in recession years : 3 Minimum number of members the dating site Beautiful People has expelled since December for being too fat : 5,000 Percentage of obese Americans who say they respond to weight discrimination by eating more : 79
Figures cited are the latest available as of January 2010. Sources are listed on page 78. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Total profits earned by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank last year : $46,100,000,000 Rank of 2009 among the bank’s most profitable years on record : 1 Number of U.S. banks receiving federal bailout funds that have missed at least one interest payment to the government : 63 Estimated amount that all U.S. banks charged t heir customers last year in overdraft fees : $38,900,000,000 Percentage of Americans who say they are satisfied with their jobs and their commutes, respectively : 45, 56 Number of states where the unemployment rate for African Americans is at least twice that of white Americans : 16 Amount that President Obama has added to America’s “brand value” according to the Nation Brands Index : $2,100,000,000,000 Estimated value of all bribes paid each year in Afghanistan, expressed as a portion of the country’s legal GDP : 1/4 Expressed as a portion of its opium, morphine, and heroin trade : 9/10 Amount of money misused or embezzled by Chinese of ficials last year, according to a government audit : $34,400,000,000 Percentage of cell phones made by Chinese companies that are unlicensed knockoffs of Western models : 42 Chance that a U.S. automobile accident occurs when at least one of the drivers is texting or talking on a cell phone : 1 in 4 Percentage change since 2008 in the average speed of an Internet connection worldwide : +13 Percentage change in the United States : –2.4 Price paid on eBay in January for a sculpture, by a conceptual artist in Mexico, that automatically sells itself on eBay : $6,350 Date on which Namibia acquired its first mainframe computer : 11/7/2009 Price, from a Michigan company, for a downloadable punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm : $1.99 Average number of hours a U.S. child aged 8 to 18 spends using an electronic device or watching television each day : 7.6 Average number of snacks eaten per day by a U.S. child in 1977 and today, respectively : 1.2, 2.3 Weight, in pounds, of the largest chocolate bunny on record, made last spring in Santa Catarina, Brazil : 6,173 Estimated number of Royal Caribbean passengers who have visited the company’s Haitian resort since the earthquake : 36,000 Amount that Chelsea Clinton raised for Haiti by hosting a spinning class in Manhattan : $76,000 Prices paid for a front-row and second-row bike, respectively : $1,000, $500 Number of volunteer ministers sent to Haiti in January by the Church of Scientology : 110 Number of German homeschoolers given asylum in January by a Tennessee court because Germany was “persecuting” them : 5 Number of rare lizards that New Zealand customs of ficials found hidden in a German man’s underpants in December : 44 Average number of arrests made each year since 2001 by all 4,000 Federal Air Marshals combined : 4 Federal spending this represents per arrest : $200,000,000 Minimum percentage of Arctic warming that has been caused by commercial-airline emissions : 10 Number of arrests in California last year for solar-panel theft : 4 Percentage of the 84,000 chemicals used commercially in the United States that are kept secret under federal law : 20 Percentage of filings to the EPA last year about “substantial risk” from compounds that involved these secret chemicals : 50 Chance that an American adult claims to wash his or her hands at least ten times a day : 1 in 2 Chance that he or she has a specific phobia of some kind : 1 in 10 Percentage of Protestant pastors in the United States who believe that Islam is “dangerous” : 66 Percentage of American Muslims who believe the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Arabs : 40 Number of UFO sighting reports made to England’s Ministry of Defence since 1959 : 12,400 Date on which its UFO hotline was scrapped due to the recession : 12/1/2009 Percentage change in the per-capita consumption of alcohol by Britons since 1960 : +102 Percentage change since 1900 : –19
Figures cited are adjusted for in flation and are the latest available as of February 2010. Sources are listed on page 82. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Percentage of Republicans in a January survey who believed their state should secede from the Union : 23 Percentage who said President Barack Obama “wants t he terrorists to win” : 24 Percentage of Republican party leaders who say they would support a tax increase this year “under any circumstances” : 4 Projected amount by which U.S. defense spending will rise next year under Obama’s “spending freeze” : $30,569,000,000 Total unfunded retirement liabilities of U.S. state governments today : $1,000,000,000,000 Percentage of health-care spending in India, China, and the United States, respectively, that is private : 75, 59, 54 Average number of minutes that a private-practice doctor in India spends with a patient : 3.5 Average portion of the teachers at government-run primary schools in India that is absent on any given workday : 1/4 Percentage of its faculty a Rhode Island public high school fired in February due to poor student performance : 100 Percentage of its 84 death-row inmates that Louisiana sued in January to block legal challenges to its execution procedures : 100 Percentage change last year in U.S. bank robberies : –11 Number of states that tax the possession of illegal drugs : 19 Amount that Kansas has assessed drug offenders in tax-evasion penalties under such a law : $17,700,000 Percentage change in 2009 in the U.S. rate of violent crime : –4.4 Chances that an American believes crime went up last year : 3 in 4 Percentage of Americans who support allowing “homosexuals” to serve in the military : 59 Percentage who support allowing “gay men and lesbians” to serve : 70 Number of reported U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan since Obama’s inauguration : 78 Number during George W. Bush’s entire presidency : 45 Percentage change since 2007 in worldwide sales of surge protectors : –28 Estimated amount that 2007 regulations on power adapters have saved Americans in electricity costs : $830,000,000 Average increase in cost for each new adapter : $0 Projected change this year in the garbage-collection revenue of Berkeley, California, due to increased recycling : –$1,500,000 Number of active farmers’ markets in the United States : 5,274 Percentage of them that were started during the past decade : 46 Percentage of TV meteorologists in a University of Texas survey who said they thought global warming was a “scam” : 29 Percentage of Americans who say they trust their TV meteorologists’ opinions on global warming : 56 Ratio of the number of Republicans in Congress who use Twitter to the number of Democrats who do : 2:1 Minimum number of users on A-Space, the U.S. intelligence community’s online social network : 14,000 Number of members in WELCOM, the exclusive online social network of Davos attendees : 5,000 Number of online subscribers to Newsday three months after the publication imposed a $5-per-week paywall : 35 Number of grammatical errors found by a retired high school teacher in a single issue of The Miami Herald in January : 133 Minimum weight, in pounds, of patrons who can eat free at the Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Delray, Florida : 350 Man-hours it took to build an entire stage set from Godiva chocolate for a February episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show : 1,400 Minutes it took the audience to break it apart and take it home with them : 30 Number of cannonballs used in the Battle of the Alamo currently owned by singer Phil Collins : 18 Median age in 1982 of Americans who attended a jazz concert that year : 29 Median age today of Americans who h ad : 46 Percentage of U.S. seniors who favor legalizing marijuana for personal use : 23 Percentage who favor legalizing it for medical use : 69
Figures cited a re the latest availabl e as of March 2010. Sources are li sted on page 69. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Number of current members of Congress who are former congressional staffers : 75 Number of these who were elected to the seat occupied by their former boss : 30 Average age of a sitting U.S. senator : 64 Average age in 1959, 1909, and 1789, respectively : 58, 58, 47 Percentage of all U.S. stimulus funds for renewable energy since last September that have gone to foreign companies : 79 Average percentage of residents without insurance in districts whose representatives voted for health-care reform : 13 Average percentage in districts whose representatives voted against reform : 15 Portion of funding to the U.K. Conservative Party that comes from ten individuals : 1/5 Percentage of British elementary-school students who think Isaac Newton discovered fire : 60 Percentage of its public schools that Kansas City, Missouri, will close before the school year begins : 46 Chances that a U.S. public school cafeteria does not serve either fresh fruits or raw vegetables daily : 2 in 5 Percentage of American public high schools that have vending machines on campus : 97 Percentage, by revenue, of PepsiCo’s products that the company classi fies as “good for you” : 18 Percentage that it classi fies as “fun for you” or “better for you” : 82 Number of U.S. corporations that have promoted the Census to their customers and employees this year : 55,000 Minimum number of Americans who receive their Social Security benefits on prepaid debit cards : 1,000,000 Chance that a U.S. household today is multigenerational : 1 in 6 Percentage change in U.S. wages for every one point increase in the percentage of foreign-born workers in the labor force : +0.5 Estimated cost to locate, process, and deport all illegal immigrants i n the United States : $285,000,000,000 Percentage change since the fall of 2008 in total DEA seizures of marijuana : +94 Longest period, in days, between formal televised news conferences by George W. Bush : 204 Days that have elapsed since Barack Obama’s last such conference : 278 Number of press conferences that China’s prime minister holds each year : 1 Number of Chinese boys born for every 100 girls born between 1985 and 1989 : 108 Number today : 124 Projected ratio, in 2015, of the total surplus of Chinese boys caused by gender selection to the total population of U.S. boys : 1:1 Percentage change in the past year in the average value of urban real estate in China : +140 Percentage of Chinese who say they intend to start a business within the next three years : 23 Percentage of Colombians and Americans, respectively, who say this : 57, 7 Total value of the 10,149 U.S. companies acquired since 2001 by foreign interests : $1,480,000,000,000 Percentage of the French who think it “somewhat” or “very” possible they will one day become homeless : 56 Number of homeless people in France and the United States, respectively, per 1,000 residents : 2, 5 Median net worth of a white American woman aged 36 to 49 : $42,600 Median net worth of a nonwhite American woman that age : $5 Number of Americans who wrote in “Negro” to describe their race on the 2000 Census : 56,175 Retail price at one Louisiana Walmart in March for an African-American Ballerina Barbie doll : $3 Price for a white Ballerina Barbie : $5.93 Fee charged since 1951 by South Carolina to anyone registering as a “subversive agent” : $5 Total number of registrants before and a fter, respectively, a news story about the program appeared this February : 0, 13 Number of the thirteen who paid with Confederate money : 1
Figures cited are the latest available as of April 2010. Sources are listed on page 64. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Estimated cost of the environmental damage caused each year by the world’s 3,000 largest companies : $2,200,000,000,000 Portion of the companies’ total profits this represents : 1/3 Number of industrial facilities found by the EPA to have been in continuous violation of the Clean Air Act since 2007 : 2,000 Percentage of all political contributions made last year by the ten largest U.S. hedge fund firms that went to Democrats : 71 Percentage of federal bailout loan payments made by GM that have been made with federal bailout funds : 100 Minimum number of children under 18 who have received first-time-homebuyer tax credits from the IRS since 2008 : 582 Amount New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s foundation deposited in Caribbean tax shelters in 2008 : $288,000,000 Percentage change since 2008 in the number of American expatriates who have given up t heir citizenship : +220 Number of clemency requests Barack Obama has approved since entering of fice, of the 2,482 he has considered : 0 Number of other presidents since 1900 who considered this many requests before approving his first : 0 Years that a single Freedom of Information Act request has been u nder consideration by the government : 18 Chances that a FOIA request, in any given year, has been made by or on behalf of a U.S. non-media business : 3 in 5 Minimum value of all stocks currently held by life- and health-insurance firms in U.S. fast-food companies : $1,880,000,000 Percentage change in the number of registered users at eLayaway.com since December 2008 : +300 Chance that a publicly traded U.S. company started with venture-capital funds was founded by immigrants : 1 in 4 Number of the 25 largest U.S. cities in which immigrants hold more white-collar jobs than blue-collar jobs : 14 Percentage of Mexicans in a 2009 survey who said the “primary loyalty” of Mexican Americans should be to Mexico : 69 Chances that an Arizonan is Latino : 3 in 10 Chance that an Arizona voter is : 1 in 6 Date that Arizona banned ethnic-studies classes that teach hatred of “other races or classes of people” in public schools : 5/11/10 Estimated number of wild coyotes killed or trapped by hunters in Arizona last year : 30,000 Estimated number of categories of products that are currently available for sale in the Gaza Strip : 4,000 Number of those that are legally imported into Gaza : 73 Minimum number of Palestinians who have had their residency rights revoked by Israel since 2003 : 6,739 Percentage of Afghan police units that the U.S. military believes are capable of operating without assistance : 12 Chance that a new Afghan police recruit knows how to read : 1 in 10 Minutes of reporting on the Iraq war aired so far this year on network-television news programs : 14 Percentage change since 2007 in the number of alleged sexual assaults committed by U.S. service members : +18 Number of Mexican states where legal penalties for abortion are more severe for women found to be of “ill repute” : 8 Chances that a young Egyptian woman thinks a man should be allowed to beat his wife for speaking to another man : 2 in 3 Minimum number of people arrested in Lahore, Pakistan, in February for selling or flying kites : 113 Number of U.S. states in which it is legal for first cousins to marry : 19 Percentage of Americans in a 2009 survey who said they were “satis fied” with their family lives : 90 Number of states that currently ban involuntary implanting of microchips into a person’s body : 4 Average number of Americans hospitalized each July with sparkler injuries : 1,020 Percentage of Americans in 1973 and 2006 who considered air conditioning a “necessity” : 26, 70 Percentage in 2009 : 54 Percentage of English soccer fans in North America who would fast for a week to see t heir country win the World Cup : 93 Percentage of Italians there who would : 1 Odds, given by an online bookma ker, that the Large Hadron Collider will confirm the existence of God : 100:1
Figures cited are the latest available as of May 2010. Sources are listed on page 55. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Total campaign contributions Barack Obama received from BP between 2004 and 2009 : $77,051 Number of politicians who accepted more in donations from BP during that period : 0 Factor by which BP’s 2010 first-quarter profits exceed its $75-million liability cap for the Gulf oil spill : 75 Percentage of “willful” violations by U.S. oil re finers since 2007 that occurred at BP plants, according to OSHA : 97 Percentage of stock-dividend payments made by British companies last year that were from BP : 12 Percentage of all U.S. derivatives that are currently held by five finance firms : 97 Projected amount U.S. state and local governments will lose this year on interest-rate swaps with banks : $1,600,000,000 Estimated amount the Greek government will lose due to tax evasion : $18,000,000,000 Percentage of their personal income Americans paid in taxes last year : 17 Last year in which Americans paid so little : 1971 Percentage of all U.S. personal income last year that came from wages and government programs, respectively : 52, 17 Number of years since record keeping began in 1929 that these figures have been so low and so high, respectively : 0 Percentage change since 2007 in the hourly wage of an American man with a postgraduate degree : +26 Percentage change for a high school dropout : –16 Percentage change since 2007 in the median wealth of white Americans a nd African Americans, respectively : –34, –77 Minimum number of African Americans r unning as Republicans in this year’s congressional elections : 32 Last year in which an African-American Republican was elected to the House : 2001 Number of immigrants deported during George W. Bush’s first year as president : 116,782 Number deported during Obama’s first year : 387,790 Percentage of Americans in a May survey who thought hiring an illegal immigrant should be a criminal of fense : 73 Percentage who thought churches should be required to report illegal immigrants : 33 Percentage of Pakistanis who hold a favorable opinion of China and of the United States, respectively : 84, 16 Number of nuclear reactors currently under construction in China : 23 Date on which the only con firmed survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic-bomb attacks died : 1/4/2010 Number of Medals of Honor awarded to U.S. soldiers in World War II : 464 Number awarded so far in Iraq and Afghanistan : 6 Percentage of all countries that hold “prisoners of conscience,” according to Amnesty International : 30 Percentage of G-20 countries that do : 42 Price of an onesie from a North Carolina sports-apparel company : $12.99 Percentage of Israeli Jews in an April survey who said Israel allows “too much freedom of expression” : 50 Percentage change since 2001 in the number of personal-injury lawsuits filed against New York City police of ficers : +97 Chance that a U.S. criminologist thinks abolishing the death penalty would increase the murder rate : 1 in 10 Number of states that have eased restrictions on Sunday alcohol sales since the beginning of the recession : 5 Number of states where it is legal for employers to discriminate on the basis of physical appearance : 49 Percentage of gay mar riages performed in Iowa that have been between residents of the state : 40 Percentage of unmarried American men over 45 who use condoms when they have sex : 29 Chance that a sexually active U.S. teenage boy would be “pleased” if he “got a female pregnant” : 1 in 5 Chance that a teenage girl has used the rhythm method for contraception : 1 in 6 Percentage of U.S. Catholics who believe there is “spiritual energy” in trees and mountains : 29 Percentage who believe in the “evil eye” : 17
Figures cited are the latest available as of June 2010. Sources are listed on page 57. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Number of U.S. states with a projected 2011 budget shortfall of at least 10 percent : 31 Estimated number of states that will hold less than 1 percent of their annual spending in reserve this year : 14 Number of states whose pension plans were fully funded in 2000 : 26 Number whose are now : 3 Projected change since last year in the amount of money states receive from corporate taxes : –$2,500,000,000 Pages of documents Goldman Sachs has submitted since May to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission : 2,500,000,000 Number of days federal investigators have been given to review all the documents before issuing their final report : 209 Median bond rating for U.S. corporations in 1981 and 2009, respectively : A, BBB– Percentage of all campaign donations from securities and investment firms that went to Democrats in 2009 : 61 Percentage so far this year : 44 Percentage change in new-home sales in the month after a federal first-time homebuyer program expired in April : –33 Number of prison inmates who received tax credits under the program : 1,295 Number of them serving life sentences : 241 Price that Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater, charges for a two-day “Home Defense” course : $400 Number of people on the federal terrorism watch list who have undergone background checks to purchase guns or explosives : 650 Chances that they were allowed to buy their weapons : 9 in 10 Average annual government expenditures since 2005 on military research and development : $77,000,000,000 Average expenditures on energy research and development : $5,000,000,000 Value of the fuel contracts awarded to BP by the Pentagon last year : $2,200,000,000 Rank of BP among the largest fuel suppliers to the Defense Department : 1 Number of federal environmental-impact study exemptions granted to oil and gas companies in the Gulf since the BP oil spill : 33 Percentage of seafood consumed in the United States that is imported : 83 Number of Americans who have died since 1998 from drinking unpasteurized milk : 2 Estimated number of U.S. children hospitalized last year after hurting themselves on monkey bars, swings, or slides : 173,000 Number of states that applied for federal education funds in the first round of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program : 40 Number that have received funds : 2 Number of public-school jobs that have been lost in the past year : 85,700 Chances that a public school district plans to increase class sizes in the coming school year : 3 in 5 Percentage of American 16- and 17-year-olds who use text messaging who say they do so while driving : 34 Percentage of adults who do : 47 Minimum number of U.S. colleges that allow household pets to live in student dormitories : 6 Minimum number of dogs killed in Baghdad between April and July as part of a government anti-stray campaign : 58,000 Days it took to try, convict, and execute a man who killed eight schoolchildren last April in Nanping, China : 36 Price paid at a June auction for the Checker Cab Lee Harvey Oswald used as a getaway car : $35,750 Number of New York City bus drivers who filed an assault report last year after being spat on by a passenger : 51 Average number of days of paid leave taken by the drivers to recover from the assault : 64 Number of prisoners at the U.N. detention center in The Hague who have fathered children while awaiting trial for war crimes : 2 Estimated number of cases pending in India’s court systems : 30,000,000 Number of people in India who currently have access to a mobile phone : 617,500,000 Number who have access to a toilet : 366,000,000
Figures cited are the latest available as of July 2010. Sources are listed on page 66. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Total number of pages in the financial reform bill enacted by Congress in July : 848 Number of pages in the bills that created Social Security and the Federal Trade Commission, respectively : 29, 8 Percentage of this year’s federal budget de ficit attributable to Bush-era tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan : 38 Net change in the amount of money kept in U.S. stock-based mutual funds since 2007 : –$249,400,000,000 Percentage of all revenue earned by S&P 500 companies last year that came from outside the United States : 47 Percentage of all U.S. railway freight cars that are cur rently in storage : 23 Percentage of municipal workers in Maywood, California, who were laid off in July : 100 Date on which the Oakland Police stopped responding to burglaries not in progress due to a budget shortfall : 8/2/10 Chance that a U.S. worker plans to change jobs when the recession ends : 1 in 3 Date that United Farm Workers began “Take Our Jobs,” a campaign asking legal U.S. residents to work as farm laborers : 6/24/10 Number so far who have been willing to do so : 14 Percentage of Oklahoma’s population that is Muslim : 0.81 Date on which its state legislature approved a referendum to ban judges from using shari’ah law in their decisions : 5/24/10 Date on which an evangelical Christian congregation in Gainesville, Florida, scheduled a Koran burning at its church : 9/11/10 Percentage of Afghans in a July survey who said they believed NATO forces were in Afghanistan to rebuild the country : 1 Percentage who said NATO was there to destroy Islam : 9 Number of Aerial Achievement Medals awarded by the Air Force to drone operators since January 2009 : 3,497 Number awarded to pilots of manned aircraft during that time : 1,408 Minimum number of people prosecuted so far by the Obama Administration for leaking classified documents : 4 Number prosecuted under the Bush Administration : 0 Number of instances in which the New York Times characterized the practice of waterboarding as torture before 2004 : 44 Number of times that it has since then : 2 Estimated number of “behavior detection of ficers” employed in U.S. airports to spot potentially dangerous travelers : 3,000 Percentage of the of ficers’ 266,000 referrals since 2006 th at led to arrests : 0.7 Chance that an American adult is either incarcerated, on probation, or on parole : 1 in 31 Chances that a Chinese criminal prosecution will result in a guilty verdict : 9 in 10 Number of the world’s ten largest banks that were Chinese-owned in 2000 and 2010, respectively : 0, 4 Date on which the Xinglong Big Family Mall in Shenyang, China, opened a “venting store” for women : 3/8/10 Minimum amount a woman must spend in t he mall to enter the store and destroy household furniture and electronics : $6 Percentage change in sales of birth control for women in the United States since 2007 : +13 Chance that a Briton who has sent a sexually explicit text message has sent one to the wrong person : 1 in 5 Price of a lingerie calendar produced by the Czech Public Affairs Party featuring twelve female members of parliament : $20.73 Percentage of Americans who say they would have cosmetic surgery if they could afford it : 69 Percentage increase in the number of U.S. buttock-augmentation surgeries performed since 2008 : 37 Inches by which the average width of a seat in a U.S. performing-arts theater has increased since 1990 : 1 Percentage change since 2008 in the number of Americans who say they exercise regularly : +6 Percentage change in the number who are obese : 0 Number of different Halloween costumes a San Diego company markets for sale as “sassy & sexy” : 51 Date on which a Dutch porn star pledged to “give a BJ” to her Twitter followers if the Netherlands won the World Cup : 6/28/10 Number of people who signed up to follow her between then and the World Cup final : 105,269
Figures cited are the latest available as of August 2010. Sources are listed on p age 74. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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H RPER’ INDEX Date that the Tea Party Bookshop in Salem, Oregon, changed its name to Tigress Books : 8/24/10 Percentage of Republican congressional candidates endorsed by Sara h Palin who won their primary races : 60 Chance that a viewer of Fox News’s prime-time broadcast is African-American : 1 in 100 Number of Ebonics speakers the DEA requested this year to interpret wiretapped conversations of African-American suspects : 9 Percentage of Americans who say they do not know a Muslim : 62 Days after the U.S. military relinquished control of its last prison in Iraq that four prisoners escaped : 5 Percentage of city-dwelling Iraqis who lived in slums in 2003, according to the United Nations : 20 Percentage who do today : 53 Number of active-duty U.S. soldiers who have sought “behavioral health counseling” so far this year : 32,994 Number of musicians currently serving in U.S. military bands : 7,007 Number of English-language schools operated by the Walt Disney Company in China : 15 Percentage of babies born in Hong Kong last year whose mothers were visitors from mainland China : 36 Percentage of children born in the United States in 2008 with at least one parent in the country illegally : 8 Average amount that U.S. parents spend to raise a child to age 18 : $286,000 Chance that an American teenager in an August survey was considering “un-friending” his or her parents on Facebook : 1 in 3 Percentage of Americans under age 25 who say they would read a text message while “on the john” : 24 Percentage who would while having sex : 11 Percentage of 27- to 45-year-old women who have at least four sexual fantasies per week : 35 Percentage of 18- to 26-year-old women who do : 27 Number of women who served on the boards of major corporations last year in Japan and Kuwait, respectively : 15, 30 Net worth of India’s ten richest people, expressed as a percentage of the country’s GDP : 12 Average interest rate currently paid by credit-card holders in Mexico : 32 Number of British households in which no adult has ever been employed : 352,000 Net domestic profits earned by U.S. corporations since the fourth quarter of 2008 : $609,000,000,000 Net decrease since then in the amount these companies spent on wages and benefits : ! $171,000,000,000 Average value of the 2009 salary and benefits paid to private-sector and federal workers, respectively : $61,050, $115,182 Percentage increase since 1960 in the average weight of a farm-raised U.S. turkey : 72 Percentage of American corporations whose stock is currently rated as a “buy,” according to Bloomberg : 29 Number of U.S. state and local government jobs that have been lost so far this year : 135,000 Number of Americans who were awarded Social Security retirement benefits last year : 2,740,000 Percentage of these people who opted to apply early in exchange for reduced bene fits : 73 Percentage of British businessmen who travel with their teddy bears : 25 Percentage of British men who say they share “all [their] secrets” with their teddy bears : 15 Percentage of women who say they do : 10 Chance that an American couple who met since 2007 first met online : 1 in 4 Number of people trampled to death in July during a stampede at the Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany : 21 Amount the German environment ministry paid hunters last year for their radioactive wild-boar meat : $590,000 Number of countries in which gay sex is currently illegal : 76 Number of overdue books returned last year to the San Francisco Public Library during a two-week “fine amnesty” : 29,228 Number of years a copy of George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman had been overdue : 45
Figures cited are the latest available as of September 2010. Sources are listed on page 66. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Percentage change in the U.S. unemployment rate since June 2009, when the recession of ficially ended : +1 Chance that a heterosexual man who moved in with his partner in 2010 had been unemployed for at least a year : 1 in 4 Estimated percentage of all U.S. murders that are committed by women : 10 Percentage of executions for murder since 1977 that were of women : 1 Percentage of U.S. female senior-level executives who say they have had an affair with a male boss : 15 Estimated percentage change since 2000 in the number of management positions in U.S. companies held by women : 0 Percentage change in reading scores for public-school fourth graders since No Child Left Behind became law : +1 Number of delayed-notice search warrants granted by federal judges last year under the Patriot Act : 1,150 Number that were related to drug offenses and terrorism, respectively : 844, 6 Number of times between January and June that Google turned over user information to government investigators : 4,287 Date a congressional report called the number of government entities to be created by health-care reform “unknowable” : 7/8/10 Value of economic-recovery bonds the State of Louisiana has sold since Hurricane Katrina : $5,900,000,000 Percentage of the revenue that has been spent on projects in New Orleans : 1 Percentage spent on the Lower Ninth Ward : 0 On the state’s oil industry : 29 Estimated percentage change in the poverty rate in the developing world since 1990 : –40 Change if China is not included in this figure : –18 Estimated value of Chinese household income that goes unreported : $1,400,000,000,000 Portion of China’s GDP this represents : 1/3 Portion of all pencils, pens, and crayons sold last year that were manufactured in China : 1/3 Percentage of African Americans in a September survey who said they feel their standard of living is improving : 63 Percentage of white Americans who feel this way : 40 Percentage change in the U.S. suicide rate for every 500 meters above sea level : +17 Price a British company charges to have a deceased person’s ashes pressed into a package of 30 vinyl records : $4,704 Estimated loss to Japan’s economy last year from suicides and depression : $29,000,000,000 Percentage of all food consumed in Cuba that is imported : 80 Chance that an Indian child younger than five is chronically malnourished : 1 in 2 Rank of carbonated beverages among the best-selling grocery items in the United States this year : 1 Rank of baked desserts, pizza, and soda as sources of calories for American children, respectively : 1, 2, 3 Number of children born last year on Christmas Day in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania : 3 Chances that an American believes that Jesus Christ will return to earth by 2050 : 2 in 5 Percentage change since 2008 in the number of Jewish Americans who identify themselves as Republican : +77 Chance that an American believes Ramadan is the Jewish day of atonement : 1 in 10 Chance that a U.S. Protestant knows who Martin Luther is : 1 in 2 Percentage of Americans who believe that Stephen King wrote Moby-Dick : 4 Number of U.S. states in which it is legal to own a tiger without a license : 9 Portion of the world’s reindeer herds that are currently in decline : 4/5 Number of poisonous dead mice the USDA airdropped into Guam this year to eradicate an invasive snake species : 316 Milligrams of acetaminophen inserted into each mouse : 80 Number of episodes of Happy Days that aired after the one in which the Fonz jumped a shark : 164
Figures cited a re the latest availabl e as of October 2010. Sources are listed on page 74. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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HARPER’S INDEX A retrospective of the Bush era Number of news stories from 1998 to Election Day 2000 containing “George W. Bush” and “aura of inevitability” : 206 Amount for which Bush successfully sued Enterprise Rent-A-Car in 1999 : $2,500 Year in which a political candidate first sued Palm Beach County over problems with hanging chads : 1984 Total amount the Bush campaign paid Enron and Halliburton for use of corporate jets during the 2000 recount : $15,400 Percentage of Bush’s first 189 appointees who also served in his father’s administration : 42 Minimum number of Bush appointees who have regulated industries they used to represent as lobbyists : 98 Years before becoming energy secretary that Spencer Abraham cosponsored a bill to abolish the Department of Energy : 2 Number of Chevron oil tankers named after Condoleezza Rice, at the time she became foreign policy adviser : 1 Date on which the GAO sued Dick Cheney to force the release of documents related to current U.S. energy policy : 2/22/02 Number of other officials the GAO has sued over access to federal records : 0 Months before September 11, 2001, that Cheney’s Energy Task Force investigated Iraq’s oil resources : 6 Hours after the 9/11 attacks that an Alaska congressman speculated they may have been committed by “eco-terrorists” : 9 Date on which the first contract for a book about September 11 was signed : 9/13/01 Number of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African men detained in the U.S. in the eight weeks after 9/11 : 1,182 Number of them ever charged with a terrorism-related crime : 0 Number charged with an immigration violation : 762 Days since the federal government first placed the nation under an “elevated terror alert” that the level has been relaxed : 0 Minimum number of calls the FBI received in fall 2001 from Utah residents claiming to have seen Osama bin Laden : 20 Number of box cutters taken from U.S. airline passengers since January 2002 : 105,075 Percentage of Americans in 2006 who believed that U.S. Muslims should have to carry special I.D. : 39 Chances an American in 2002 believed the government should regulate comedy routines that make light of terrorism : 2 in 5 Rank of Mom, Dad, and Rudolph Giuliani among those whom 2002 college graduates said they most wished to emulate : 1, 2, 3 Number of members of the rock band Anthrax who said they hoarded Cipro so as to avoid an “ironic death” : 1 Estimated total calories members of Congress burned giving Bush’s 2002 State of the Union standing ovations : 22,000 Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU : 50 Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following : 1,069 Estimated number of U.S. intelligence reports on Iraq that were based on information from a single defector : 100 Number of times the defector had ever been interviewed by U.S. intelligence agents : 0 Date on which Bush said of Osama bin Laden, “I truly am not that concerned about him” : 3/13/02 Days after the U.S. invaded Iraq that Sony trademarked “Shock & Awe” for video games : 1 Days later that the company gave up the trademark, citing “regrettable bad judgment” : 25 Number of books by Henry Kissinger found in Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion : 2 Number by then– New York Times reporter Judith Miller : 1 Factor by which an Iraqi in 2006 was more likely to die than in the last year of the Saddam regime : 3.6 Factor by which the cause of death was more likely to be violence : 120 Chance that an Iraqi has fled his or her home since the beginning of the war : 1 in 6 Portion of Baghdad residents in 2007 who had a family member or friend wounded or killed since 2003 : 3/4 Percentage of U.S. veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have filed for disability with the VA : 35 Chance that an Iraq war veteran who has served two or more tours now has post-traumatic stress disorder : 1 in 4 Number of all U.S. war veterans who have been denied Veterans Administration health care since 2003 : 452,677 Number of eligibility restrictions for admission into the Army that have been loosened since 2003 : 9
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Percentage change from 2004 to 2007 in the number of Army recruits admitted despite having been charged with a felony : +295 Date on which the White House announced it had stopped looking for WMDs in Iraq : 1/12/05 Years since his acquittal that O. J. Simpson has said he is still looking for his wife’s “real killers” : 13 Minimum number of close-up photographs of Bush’s hands owned by his current chief of staff, Josh Bolten : 4 Number of vehicles in the motorcade that transports Bush to his regular bike ride in Maryland : 6 Estimated total miles he has ridden his bike as president : 5,400 Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots : 1/3 Minimum number of times that Frederick Douglass was beaten in what is now Donald Rumsfeld’s vacation home : 25 Estimated number of juveniles whom the United States has detained as enemy combatants since 2002 : 2,500 Minimum number of detainees who were tortured to death in U.S. custody : 8 Minimum number of extraordinary renditions that the United States has made since 2006 : 200 Date on which USA Today added Guantánamo to its weather map : 1/3/05 Number of incidents of torture on prime-time network TV shows from 2002 to 2007 : 897 Number on shows during the previous seven years : 110 Percentage change since 2000 in U.S. emigration to Canada : +79 Number of the thirty-eight Iraq war veterans who have run for Congress who were Democrats : 21 Percentage of Republicans in 2005 who said they would vote for Bush over George Washington : 62 Seconds it took a Maryland consultant in 2004 to pick a Diebold voting machine’s lock and remove its memory card : 10 Number of states John Kerry would have won in 2004 if votes by poor Americans were the only ones counted : 40 Number if votes by rich Americans were the only ones counted : 4 Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners : 3/4 Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level : 3,500,000 Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses : +172 Estimated percentage by which Social Security benefits would have declined if Bush’s privatization plan had passed : –15 Percentage change since 2002 in the number of U.S. teens using illegal drugs : –9 Percentage change in the number of adults in their fifties doing so : +121 Number of times FDA officials met with consumer and patient groups as they revised drug-review policy in 2006 : 5 Number of times they met with industry representatives : 113 Amount the Justice Department spent in 2001 installing curtains to cover two seminude statues of Justice : $8,650 Number of Republican officials who have been investigated by the Justice Department since 2001 : 196 Number of Democratic officials who have been : 890 Number of White House officials in 2006 and 2007 authorized to discuss pending criminal cases with the DOJ : 711 Number of Clinton officials ever authorized to do so : 4 Years since a White House official as senior as I. Lewis Libby had been indicted while in office : 130 Number of U.S. cities and towns that have passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Bush : 92 Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper shredding : +466 Percentage of EPA scientists who say they have experienced political interference with their work since 2002 : 60 Change since 2001 in the percentage of Americans who believe humans are causing climate change : –4 Number of total additions made to the U.S. endangered-species list under Bush : 61 Average number made yearly under Clinton : 65 Minimum number of pheasant hunts Dick Cheney has gone on since he shot a hunting companion in 2006 : 5 Days after Hurricane Katrina hit that Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines : 1 Days after the hurricane that the White House authorized sending federal troops into New Orleans : 4
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Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents : 1/4 Percentage change in the number of Louisiana and Mississippi newborns named Katrina in the year after the storm : +153 Rank of Nevaeh, “heaven” spelled backward, among the fastest growing names given to American newborns since 2000 : 1 Months, beginning in 2001, that the federal government’s online condom fact sheet disappeared from its website : 17 Minimum amount that religious groups received in congressional earmarks from 2003 to 2006 : $209,000,000 Amount such groups received during the previous fourteen years : $107,000,000 Percentage change from 2003 to 2007 in the amount of money invested in U.S. faith-based mutual funds : +88 Average annualized percentage return during that time in the Christian and Muslim funds, respectively : +11, +15 Number of feet the Ground Zero pit has been built up since the site was fully cleared in 2002 : 30 Number of 980-foot-plus “Super Tall” towers built in the Arab world in the seven years since 9/11 : 4 Year by which the third and final phase of the 2003 “road map” to a Palestinian state was to have been reached : 2005 Estimated number of the twenty-five provisions of the first phase that have yet to be completed : 12 Number of times in 2007 that U.S. media called General David Petraeus “King David” : 14 Percentage change during the first ten months of the Iraq war “surge” in the number of Iraqis detained in U.S.-run prisons : +63 Percentage change in the number of Iraqis aged nine to seventeen detained : +285 Ratio of the entire U.S. federal budget in 1957, adjusted for inflation, to the amount spent so far on the Iraq war : 1:1 Estimated amount Bush-era policies will cost the U.S. in new debt and accrued obligations : $10,350,000,000,000 (see page 31) Percentage change in U.S. discretionary spending during Bush’s presidency : +31 Percentage change during Reagan’s and Clinton’s, respectively : +16, +0.3 Ratio in 1999 of the number of U.S. federal employees to the number of private employees on government contracts : 15:6 Ratio in 2006 : 14:15 Total value of U.S. government contracts in 2000 that were awarded without competitive bidding : $73,000,000,000 Total in 2007 : $146,000,000,000 Number of the five directors of the No Child Left Behind reading program with financial ties to a curriculum they developed : 4 Amount by which the federal government has underfunded its estimated cost to implement NCLB : $71,000,000,000 Minimum number of copies sold, since it was released in 2006, of Flipping Houses for Dummies : 45,000 Chance that the buyer of a U.S. home in 2006 now has “negative equity,” i.e., the debt on the home exceeds its value : 1 in 5 Estimated value of Henry Paulson’s Goldman Sachs stock when he became Treasury Secretary and sold it : $575,000,000 Estimated value of that stock today : $238,000,000 Salary in 2006 of the White House’s newly created Director for Lessons Learned : $106,641 Minimum number of Bush-related books published since 2001 : 606 Number of words in the first sentence of Bill Clinton’s memoir and in that of George W. Bush’s, respectively : 49, 5 Minimum number of nicknames Bush has given to associates during his presidency : 75 Number of associates with the last name Jackson he has dubbed “Action Jackson” : 2 Number of press conferences at which Bush has referred to a question as a “trick” : 14 Number of times he has declared an event or outcome not to be “acceptable” : 149 Rank of Bush among U.S. presidents with the highest disapproval rating : 1 Average percentage of Americans who approved of the job Bush was doing during his second term : 37 Percentage of Russians today who approve of the direction their country took under Stalin : 37
Most of the Bush-era figures cited here appeared in the Harper’s Index between 2000 and 2008 and have been updated as of November 2008. Sources are listed on page 68. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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HARPER’S INDEX Number of times in 2008 that the S&P 500 closed up or down 5 percent in a single day : 17 Number of times between 1956 and 2007 it did this : 17 Year that the U.S. stock market first regained its 1929 pre-crash peak : 1954 Profit that the federal government made in 1983 on stock obtained in its 1979 bailout of Chrysler : $311,000,000 Projected percentage change in the number of U.S. new-auto dealerships this year : –8 Percentage of Americans who say they would not buy a car from an automaker in bankruptcy : 94 Amount that GM’s car-loan business lost during the first nine months of 2008 : $2,700,000,000 Annual percentage interest rate that Venezuela charged Argentina for a $1 billion loan last August : 15 Date on which Venezuela and Russia conducted a joint naval exercise in the Caribbean : 12/1/08 Percentage of Russians who say one goal of U.S. foreign policy is “the complete destruction of Russia” : 43 Number of world nations that signed a treaty banning cluster bombs last December : 94 Chances that a nation with known stockpiles of cluster bombs did : 2 in 5 Number of Iraqi stray dogs that Operation Baghdad Pups has helped emigrate to the United States since 2003 : 66 Number currently on the waiting list : 50 Minimum number of Americans since January 2008 who have purchased stem-cell therapy for their dogs : 1,196 Chance that an American over 65 has no natural teeth : 1 in 4 Percentage by which chewing gum reduces anxiety during conditions of mild to moderate stress : 12 Percentage of U.S. school districts that have banned bake sales due to anti-obesity regulations : 29 Number of applications submitted last fall for a $10,000 collegiate “blogging scholarship” : 1,902 Number that turned out to be spam : 557 Minimum number of Amish households in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, that use electricity generated by solar power : 2,000 Price for one D.C. hotel’s “Eco-Inaugural” package, which includes use of a Lexus hybrid and a driver for four days : $40,000 Number of members of the “Impeach Obama” Facebook group as of last December : 8,479 Date on which the group was first posted to : 3/7/2008 Days after the Columbine shootings in 1999 that Eric Holder called for “regulations in how people interact on the Internet” : 5 Number of the four Republican-primary “rivals” in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet who left by the end of his first term : 3 Months into his first term that Lincoln told a friend his cabinet was “on the brink of destruction” : 21 Rank of Barack Obama’s election among the “biggest day[s] ever in the history of marketing,” according to an Ad Age columnist : 1 Rank of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy among “music’s most anticipated album[s] ever,” according to its ad campaign : 1 Rank the album held on the Billboard charts in the first and second weeks of its release, respectively : 3, 18 Amount for which TV Guide was sold in October : $1 Year in which Bhutan’s king instituted “Gross National Happiness” as a leading indicator : 1972 Percentage of Bhutanese who are currently happy, according to the country’s new pilot survey : 68 Pounds of ice, sculpted into the word ECONOMY, that artists used last fall to create a “literal meltdown” in Manhattan : 1,500 Estimated total value in December 2007 of the family fortune of Thomas Friedman’s wife : $3,500,000,000 Percentage change in the value of that fortune since then : –97 Percentage of unfaithful female multimillionaires who say they plan to spend less on their paramours this year : 15 Percentage of unfaithful male multimillionaires who say this : 82 Standard hourly rate at Manhattan’s Liberty Inn, whose slogan is “Your Rendezvous for Romance” : $30 Percentage discount it was offering first-time visitors last December : 50
Figures cited are the latest available as of December 2008. Sources are listed on page 68. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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HARPER’S INDEX Percentage of Americans who think their lives serve “an important purpose” : 94 Percentage of U.S. teens who say they are “completely satisfied” with themselves : 30 Chance that a U.S. high-school student says he or she has stolen something from a store in the past year : 1 in 3 Extra points that a California student added to his GPA last year by hacking into a school computer : 1.9 Years in prison to which he might be sentenced at his upcoming trial : 38 Average number of hours of television watched per week by Americans aged 43 to 61 : 19 Average number watched by those aged 26 to 42 and those aged 14 to 25, respectively : 15, 11 Number of serialized TV and radio melodramas in favor of population control produced by a Vermont group : 18 Number of countries in which the group has aired them : 23 Number of days by which the median age of Europe increases each week : 2 Percentage of residents of former Communist-bloc nations who say they live better now than in 1989 : 30 Date by which the head of Russia’s foreign-service academy says the United States will have totally disintegrated : 7/4/2010 Number of days in November that a family farm near Denver opened up its fields for free picking : 1 Number of people who showed up : 40,000 Minimum number of U.S. homeowners whose banks improved their mortgage terms in the first quarter of last year : 73,000 Percentage of them who were a month or more behind on their payments six months after the relief : 55 Number of months since record keeping began in 1947 that U.S. consumer prices declined as steeply as in November 2008 : 0 Last year in which total world trade shrank, before it did so in 2008 : 1982 Amount Italy spent last year to bail out its Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano cheese industries : $65,000,000 Minimum per-capita debt that Iceland owes to foreign depositors as a result of its banking collapse : $19,100 Per-capita reparations required of Germany in the Treaty of Versailles : $2,400 Chance that a U.S. Gulf War veteran still suffers from “Gulf War illness,” according to a federal panel : 1 in 4 Number of twenty PTSD patients in a 2008 study who reported significant improvement after being treated with ecstasy : 20 Percentage of PTSD patients in an earlier study who reported improvement after taking Zoloft : 53 Estimated total, in pounds, of explosives dropped by Israel on Gaza during the first week of this winter’s attack : 40,000 Estimated total fired into Israel by Palestinians last year : 40,000 Number of people killed by Hamas rocket attacks since 2001 : 28 Average pain rating, on a scale of 1 to 7, given by study participants to a shock they believed to be unintentional : 3.0 Average rating they assigned the same shock when they believed it to be intentional : 3.6 Percentage of the estimated total population of extraterritorial U.S. prisons that is held at Guantánamo : 1 Total number of guns that five of the six candidates for RNC chairman bragged about owning during their January debate : 22 Number of the candidates who said he had “too many to count” : 1 Amount an undisclosed buyer offered the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport last year for the Larry Craig bathroom stall : $5,000 Number of times that Caroline Kennedy said “you know” during a 45-minute interview with the New York Times : 138 Number of different occupations that Barbie has held during her 50-year run : 108 Days after going on sale that tickets to July’s National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention sold out : 2 Minimum number of nations that currently have plans to build a Ferris wheel larger than the current record holder : 3 Number of exotic marine animals that a new Dubai hotel keeps in its 3 million gallons of decorative tanks : 65,000 Pounds of “restaurant-quality” seafood the animals are fed each day : 485 Price, at a Reykjavík restaurant, of a whale kebab called “Moby Dick on a Stick” : $9
Figures cited are the latest available as of January 2009. Sources are listed on page 72. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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HARPER’S INDEX Average number of years after the beginning of a severe economic downturn that economic growth resumes : 2 Average number of years until unemployment reaches its peak : 5 Estimated amount by which the U.S. GDP increases for each additional dollar of tax cuts : $1.03 Amount for each additional dollar of infrastructure spending and food stamps, respectively : $1.59, $1.73 Date on which New York State’s unemployment trust fund ran out of money : 1/1/2009 Average amount the state’s labor department is now borrowing each week to continue making payments : $95,000,000 Amount the U.S. government spent last year on its former presidents : $2,500,000 Amount it spent on Bill Clinton’s telephone service : $79,000 Date on which a U.S. newspaper first claimed that “the honeymoon ends” for Barack Obama : 1/20/2009 Number of times in 2007 and 2008 that Senate bills were blocked by the minority because cloture votes failed : 51 Number of times this happened in 2005 and 2006, when Democrats were in the minority : 20 Number of Obama campaign promises that the St. Petersburg Times is tracking through its online “Obameter” : 510 Number so far it has called “kept” and “broken,” respectively : 11, 2 Percentage of Americans who supported gay marriage in 1996, when Obama told a Chicago newspaper he did : 27 Percentage of Americans who supported gay marriage in 2008, when Obama opposed it : 39 Years in prison to which one can be sentenced under French law for publishing a children’s book that celebrates cowardice : 1 Percentage change between 1989 and 1996 in the number of democracies worldwide : +71 Percentage change since 1996 : 0 Number of successful military coups in Africa during the 1960s and 1980s, respectively : 24, 21 Number since 2000 : 5 Average number of people in Congo who have died from war-related causes each month since August 1998 : 51,400 Projected number of extra U.S. deaths that the current recession will cause, according to a Texas professor : 71,000 Number of these that will be suicides and homicides, respectively : 1,800, 1,300 Estimated number of jobs that would be created under a U.S. single-payer health-care system : 2,600,000 Ratio of this to the total number of U.S. jobs lost last year : 1:1 Percentage by which workers in open-plan offices are more likely to have hypertension than those in walled offices : 49 Percentage of U.S. dietitians who say the recession is making it more difficult for their patients to lose weight : 56 Percentage of U.S. elementary schools that send obesity “report cards” home to parents : 23 Ratio of the number of U.S. tenth graders who smoke marijuana in a given month to the number who smoke cigarettes : 11:10 Average number of text messages sent or received each month by an American teen : 1,956 Hours that a fourteen-year-old police impersonator was sent out on assignment by Chicago’s police department in January : 5 Total revenue raised last year by the city of New York from fines on parking violations: $623,979,233 Annual budget of the New York City Department of Transportation : $697,786,000 Number of blocks in Washington, D.C., that the city declared a “Prostitution Free Zone” for the inauguration : 2 Percentage of Americans born in Washington, D.C., who still live there : 13 Percentage of Texans who still live in Texas, the highest for any state : 76 Number of Dallas-area mothers whose conversations a marketing agency covertly monitored in “mommy stings” : 400 Average number of brand names a group of mothers mentioned per minute of conversation : 1.3 Price for which a Colorado firm will genetically test a one- to six-year-old for sports aptitude : $149 Minimum number of children who have undergone the test so far : 200
Figures cited are the latest available as of February 2009. Sources are listed on page 70. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Change since March 2008 in the total credit extended to Americans through credit cards : –$349,300,000,000 Estimated portion of all new U.S. “savings” last year that actually was payment of credit-card debt : 3/4 Percentage change in the past year in t he number of U.S. cars and tr ucks repossessed : +12 Percentage change in the number of leisure boats repossessed : +72 Percentage change between 2007 and 2008 in the number of Americans who reported hag gling for goods : +29 Chances that an American who has become unemployed since December 2007 is a man : 4 in 5 Percentage of all U.S. men over twenty who are now unemployed or not seeking work : 31 Estimated percentage of Bush Administration political appointees who are currently unemployed : 70 Estimated number of Chinese factory workers who returned to the countryside in January : 14,000,000 Months after a Tokyo hotel shut down last fall that its staf f kept it running for no pay : 3 Estimated number of minutes it took riot police to eject them from the premises in January : 15 Percentage change last year in the total net worth of Russia’s ten wealthiest individuals : –68 Minimum number of jobs currently open in Antarctica : 676 Chances that the ra nge of a North American bird species has moved northward since 1966 : 3 in 5 Average number of miles north these species have moved : 99 Minimum number of bald eagles struck by U.S. airplanes since 1990 : 147 Number known to have survived : 7 Average number of books about Abraham Lincoln released every week since 2007 : 1 Percentage by which the average hourly pay of U.S. white men exceeds that of black men : 27 Percentage by which it exceeds that of biracial Americans : 40 Rank of the Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel, N.Y., among the poorest municipalities in the United States : 1 Percentage of its residents who live below the poverty line : 68 Percentage change since 2000 in the number of multigenerational U.S. households : +24 Number of MySpace accounts deleted since 2007 because they were created by registered sex offenders : 90,000 Average exam score, in a SUNY–Fredonia study, for students who only listened to a podcast of their professor’s lecture : 71 Average score for those who only attended the lecture : 62 Percentage change in the fourth quarter of 2008 in the number of new websites created worldwide : –12 Average number of seconds that Drudge Report readers spend on the site per day : 118 Average number that visitors to major newspaper sites do : 26 Current ratio of the price of a Sunday New York Times to the company’s share price : 8:9 Factor by which the total rate of U.S. tree death this year will exceed the rate in 1991 : 2 Gallons of coal ash released into a Tennessee river last December by a power plant : 1,100,000,000 Factor by which this exceeds the volume of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez : 101 Gallons of freshwater consumed in the production of a gallon of milk and beer, respectively : 1,000, 300 Number of former L.A. gang members who have been retrained since last June as solar-panel installers : 120 Price for which a group of Palestinian graf fiti artists will deface the Israeli security wall in the West Bank : $39 Number of commissions they have turned down because the requested messages linked to Viagra ads : 2 Fee offered in February to Nadya Suleman, the recent mother of octuplets, to star in a porn film : $1,000,000 Number of cloth diapers a rival company offered her to turn down the role : 400 Number of sexual scenarios published in Penthouse Forum so far this year that involve the economic downturn : 1
Figures cited are the latest available as of March 2009. Sources are listed on page 82. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Estimated percentage of this year’s college seniors who will graduate without having secured a job : 70 Percentage of Americans in a February survey who said they would act immorally to keep their jobs : 28 Percentage of U.S. corporations that will reduce or end matching contributions to employee 401(k) accounts this year : 29 Percentage of unemployed Americans who are not currently eligible to collect unemployment bene fits : 42 Number of homeless people on a waiting list to move into a tent city in Pinellas County, Florida : 62 Amount by which the total wealth of all American households declined last year : $11,200,000,000,000 Amount of money the FDIC has spent since July 2008 to insure deposits at failed U.S. banks : $20,160,000,000 Percentage of U.S. charities and non-pro fits whose funding declined last year : 52 Number of applications that a middle school in Massillon, Ohio, received for a janitorial job opening in March : 835 Height, in feet, of a stack of dollar bills constructed with the average bonus at one of Wall Street’s largest firms : 76 Percentage of U.S. millionaires who said in January that they may be unable to maintain their current lifestyle : 55 Factor by which U.S. entrepreneurs are more likely than the general population to have dyslexia : 2 Average number of years after an individual is named to the Forbes 40 0 that he or she will fall off the list : 8 Month in which, for the first time, more automobiles were sold in China than in the United States : 1/09 Minimum number of executives since January 2008 who have been held hostage by striking French workers : 15 Minimum number of inherited slaves currently owned in Niger : 43,000 Estimated percentage of all guns recovered from crime scenes in Mexico that can be traced to U.S. gun shops : 90 Number of infants the World Bank estimates will die over the next seven years because of the financial crisis : 1,400,000 Minimum number of countries where there have been food riots during the past two years : 30 Percentage change in the value of world stock markets since 2000 : –37 Percentage change in the Dow Jones Industrial Average sixty days into Barack Obama’s presidency : –8.4 Percentage change in FDR’s first sixty days : +43.5 Percentage of Tennesseans in a March survey who said they had heard a racist joke about Obama : 70 Percentage who thought the joke was funny : 16 Percentage who had themselves told the joke : 15 Date on which Barack Obama implemented new ethics guidelines restricting former lobbyists’ roles in government : 1/21/09 Days later that he waived the guidelines for the deputy secretary of defense : 1 Number of Kentucky of ficials indicted in March for vote-buying and tampering with electronic voting machines : 6 Number of election years in which they are accused of having changed votes : 3 Minimum value of assets the ba nd U2 has offshored from Ireland to t he Netherlands each year since 2006 : $27,400,000 Amount the ABBA tribute band Bjorn Again says it was paid to play a concert for Vladimir Putin i n January : $27,500 Estimated street value of drugs seized last March at t hree Phish reunion shows in Hampton, Virginia : $1,200,000 Average number of sex offenders castrated by the Czech government each year : 9 Percentage by which a Georgia sperm bank cut their sales price for “select” sperm last March : 38 Percentage of teenage girls who say their boyfriend or girlfriend has hit or slapped them, according to the CDC : 9 Percentage of boys who have been hit by their girlfriends or boyfriends : 11 Rank of Texas among states with the nation’s highest teen-pregnancy rates : 3 Percentage of Texas public-school districts that teach abstinence as their only form of sex education : 94 Additional hours per day a urology clinic in Austin, Texas, stayed open this March during its “Vas Madness” promotion : 3 Number of vasectomies the clinic performed during the campaign : 75
Figures cited are the latest available as of April 2009. Sources are listed on page 82. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Percentage change since 1985 in the number of U.S. newspapers with reporters covering Congress : –72 Percentage change since 2003 in the number of newspaper reporters covering state legislatures : –32 Number of front-page Boston Globe stories since 2007 that have been written by journalism students : 12 Months after being shot at a city council meeting last year that a Missouri reporter was laid off : 14 Total number of minutes during President Obama’s first 100 days that network-TV news shows devoted to Afghanistan : 62 Number they devoted to pirates off the Horn of Africa : 104 Percentage of Somalis last winter who thought pirates were “protecting Somalia” : 70 Number of new Justice Department lawyers so far who previously represented the Recording Industry Association of America : 5 Minimum number of “czars” Obama ha s appointed : 17 Price paid last winter for the foreclosed boyhood home of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernan ke : $83,000 Percentage of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, who approved of Obama’s job performance in April : 93, 30 Percentage of Americans in April who identified themselves as Republican : 27 Percentage who said the same month that “socialism is better th an capitalism” : 20 Minimum number of Americans whose health care is paid for by taxes : 83,000,000 Number of U.S. children who attend public boarding schools : 4,040 Number of U.S. senators who have law degrees : 53 Number of the nine members of the Chinese Communist Party’s governing body who were trained as engineers : 8 Estimated percentage change since last year in the number of Chinese factories producing fireworks for the U.S. market : –26 Number of the Founding Fathers who were gay, according to Larry Kramer : 2 Estimated value of the unmined u ranium under a 100-acre area in southern Virginia : $7,740,000,000 Number of readings and other events listed so far this year on CowboyPoetry.com : 286 Chances that a top-ten U.S. bestselling book since January has been a book about vampires by Stephenie Meyer : 2 in 5 Percentage of six- to nine-year-old American girls who wear lipstick or lip gloss : 46 Minimum number of Spanish collection agencies whose employees wear costumes in order to shame debtors into paying : 15 Amount that Japan is offering unemployed foreigners of Japanese descent to leave the cou ntry : $3,100 Minimum value of governmental bailouts of the global financial industry since 2007, per capita worldwide : $1,250 Amount this represents as a percentage of the median annual income worldwide : 39 Estimated total amount that world financial institutions will write off by 2010, according to the IMF : $4,100,000,000,000 Portion of these bad loans and securities that originated in the United States : 2/3 Percentage of rich Americans who say they have “lost faith in the integrity of financial service institutions” : 64 Percentage who say that they now “shop with coupons fairly regularly” : 65 Percentage of Americans who have made premature withdrawals from their retirement or college savings since 2008 : 27 Amount that Utah plans to raise by levying an $8 “conviction fee” against each person found guilty there : $2,800,000 Number of states that have proposed expansion of their gambling laws, including legalization, this year : 16 Projected percentage growth this year in off-the-books transactions in the United States : 9 Percentage change since 2007 in the average cost of a U.S. wedding : –24 Percentage change since last year in the amount Americans spent on ca nning and freezing supplies : +29 Chance that an American thinks “the Jews” were moderately or very much to blame for the financial crisis : 1 in 4 Chance he or she thinks they were “a little” to blame : 1 in 7 Number of poppyseed bagels that could be made with Afghanistan’s annual poppy harvest : 357,000,000,000
Figures cited are the latest available as of May 2009. Sources are listed on page 72. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Credit rating to which a Brazilian agency downgraded the U.S. government in May : AA Amount of governmental support that Canadian ban ks have required during the financial crisis : $0 Percentage of U.S. and Canadian mortgages, respectively, that are in foreclosure or more than 90 days delinquent : 7.2, 0.4 Chance that a U.S. home purchase in the first quarter of this year was of a foreclosed or short-sale property : 1 in 2 Percentage change between winter 2008 and winter 2009 in the amount of delinquent U.S. credit-card debt : +47 Percentage change in the amount of debt that credit-card companies have written off : +63 Percentage change in the number of credit-card offers Americans have received : –67 Chances that a U.S. college student in May reported feeling “down, depressed, or hopeless” : 2 in 5 Percentage change between winter 2008 and winter 2009 in sales at the goth- and punk-themed retail chain Hot Topic : +13 Average percentage change over that period in sales at teen-directed retailers overall : –8 Minimum number of U.S. spas that have packages targeted at teenagers : 3,470 Average number of body waxes that one New York spa performs on preteens each week : 15 Number of Louisiana towns the porn star Stormy Daniels has visited on her “listening tour” for a possible Senate run : 5 Number of years by which the median age of a Penthouse reader has increased during the pa st five years : 5 Estimated weekly revenue from heroin sales that two Pennsylvania senior citizens were making before their April arrest : $10,000 Tons of active pharmaceutical ingredients dumped into the environment by medical-supply companies since 1988 : 421,500 Projected percentage change by 2050 in the amount of mercury in the Pacific Ocean : +33 Estimated number of cars that it takes to produce as much CO2 as a single large cargo ship : 10,000 Backlog, in years, of retired U.S. nuclear warheads waiting to be dismantled by the federal government : 13 Estimated number of planets in the galaxy hospitable enough to support life as intelligent as humans : 37,964 Projected percentage change in worldwide electricity usage this year : –3.5 Number of years since recordkeeping began in 1945 that usage has declined : 0 Estimated percentage of all existing blogs that have not been updated in four months : 94 Chances that a Twitter user accesses the service only while at work : 2 in 3 Percentage of male British IT workers who say they consider their sex partners’ needs before their own : 82 Rank of this percentage among the highest for all industries : 1 Percentage by which moderate Internet surfers are more productive in their jobs than non-surfers : 9 Average number of different items that a 17-year-old who grew up poor can hold in his or her memory at once : 8.5 Average number of items that a 17-year-old who grew up middle-class can : 9.4 Median income of a rider on the Washington, D.C., metro-area bus system : $69,620 Median income of a rider on the subway system : $102,110 Minimum amount donated or bundled to President Obama’s campaign by the ambassadors he has nominated so far : $3,950,000 Chance that a George W. Bush cabinet member now works for a firm lobbying his or her former department : 1 in 4 Minimum amount raised for the George W. Bush presidential library so far : $100,000,000 Percentage change since 2007 in the number of Texas cattle thefts : +300 Square miles of African farmland acquired by Chinese investors since 2006 : 10,851 Factor by which the average number of hogs on each U.S. hog farm has increased since 1965 : 19 Ratio of the average number of microbes living in or on a person’s body to the average number of human cells : 10:1 Percentage of human genes that have been patented so far : 34 Estimated chance that one of these genes is owned by a private company : 1 in 4
Figures cited are the latest available as of June 2009. Sources are listed on page 51. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large U.S. health-insurance companies : +87 Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies : +428 Chances that an American bank rupted by medical bills has health insurance : 7 in 10 Portion of its membership that Washington State’s subsidized health plan intends to lose this year : 1/3 Average percentage by which it is raising premiums in order to do so : 70 Number of states that have run out of money for unemployment insurance : 16 Total amount they have borrowed from the federal government so far to bridge the gap : $11,743,613,200 Date on which Illinois stopped paying to bury the corpses of the indigent : 7/1/09 Percentage of Michigan counties that have turned at least one paved road into a gravel road since 2007 to save money : 30 Year by which Atlanta plans to have destroyed all its public housing : 2010 Percentage of total U.S. home values that Americans currently own as equity : 41 Percentage in 1945 : 84 Estimated value of troubled assets bought last fall by the federal government from U.S. banks, for each $1 spent : 66¢ Percentage change last year in North Korea’s GDP : +3.7 Rank of the United States among the world’s most peaceful countries, according to the 2009 Global Peace Index : 83 Chance that an American will suffer from a mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder in his or her lifetime : 1 in 2 Percentage of GDP spent on higher education each year by governments in the United States and Europe, respectively : 1, 1.1 Percentage spent by their respective private sectors : 1.9, 0.2 Chance that a charter school, in a Stanford study, outperformed comparable traditional public schools in math : 1 in 6 Chance that it lagged comparable public schools : 1 in 3 Minutes of standardized-test prep, on average, that New York City and Los Angeles kindergartners are given each day : 24 Minutes of unstructured playtime : 25 Number of Little Tikes Cozy Coupes, a ride-in toy car, sold in the United States last year : 457,000 Percentage by which this exceeded sales of the top automobile model : 5 Estimated percentage change since 1785 in the average body size of a Western European : +50 Estimated percentage by which brontosauruses were less massive than previously believed, according to a recent study : 50 Chance that both members of a married U.S. couple are obese : 1 in 6 Chance that both members of an unmarried couple are : 1 in 13 Number of fatal or disabling injuries suffered by female high school athletes since 1982 : 112 Percentage of the injured who were cheerleaders : 65 Years, on average, by which the lifespan of a man whose wife is seven to nine years younger than he is exceeds the norm : 2 Years by which the lifespan of a woman who mar ries a similarly younger man lags the norm : 2 Number of countries where fertility is currently below replacement levels : 76 Projected number of years by which the world median age will have increased by 2050 : 9 Year in which Nick Jonas, of the pop group the Jonas Brothers, intends to run for president : 2040 Number of Intrade’s top ten G.O.P. presidential hopefuls who will in 2012 have been out of of fice for two or more years : 5 Number of states in which a plurality of voters currently identify as Republican : 5 Chances that a U.S. conservative displays an “implicit preference” for white over black people in a psychological study : 4 in 5 Chances that a liberal does : 3 in 4 Chances that an African American does : 2 in 5
Figures cited are the latest available as of July 2009. Sources are listed on page 76. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Percentage of their countries’ respective GDPs that the U.S. and Chinese recession stimulus packages represent : 6, 13 Portion of China’s stimulus spending that will go toward infrastructure projects : 2/5 Portion of U.S. spending that will : 1/8 Percentage of Americans who could be sent to medical school in China t his year on the total U.S. health spending : 100 Minimum number of “barefoot doctors” that China trained between 1965 and 1985 : 1,500,000 Years that China’s current minister of health worked as one : 1 Number of U.S. states in which laws exist that require children to pay for the medical care of indigent parents : 30 Minimum number of states where nursing homes have u sed these provisions to sue children of nonpaying residents : 2 Percentage of patients diagnosed by doctors as “vegetative” that a Belgian study found to be minimally conscious : 40 Percentage change since 2008 in the number of U.S. households planting gardens : +19 Percentage of the gardeners who say the recession ha s figured in their planting : 62 Chance a U.S. household that owns a Prius also owns a n SUV : 1 in 3 Average number of inches by which high tides in Philadelphia exceeded normal during June : 12 Chance that a merchant ship worldwide is currently unused due to declining trade : 1 in 12 Amount New York City spends each year on air, bus, and train tickets to send homeless people out of town : $500,000 Portion of its highway rest areas that Virginia is closing this year : 1/2 Percentage by which the number of new Washington, D.C., speed bumps so far in 2009 exceeds the last three years’ combined : 17 Amount that one House Democrat on the Ba nking Committee lost in a stock scam between 2000 and 2005 : $3,000,000 Percentage rate of U.S. obesity that the Department of Health and Human Services says it hopes to achieve by 2011 : 15 Number of states where less than 20 percent of the population is currently obese : 1 Number of states where the obesity rate declined last year : 0 Average number of calories by which Americans underestimate the total in a hamburger and fries : 463 Number of the past 22 months in which the U.S. pork industry has lost money : 20 Estimated percentage change since 2003 in the number of Christians living in Iraq : –60 Median percentage of people in 21 nations surveyed who tru st President Obama to “do the right thing” in world affairs : 71 Median percentage of respondents who said the same thing about George W. Bush in March 2008 : 17 Number of times Bush and Obama, respectively, used the word “evil” during their first six months as president : 18, 14 Percentage of unintended U.S. pregnancies that are carried to term : 43 Percentage of U.S. pregnancies that the mothers report to be unintended : 47 Percentage change since last year in the number of Americans looking into sperm or egg donation : +40 Minimum number of Americans named either John or Jane Doe : 212 Number of online virtual worlds that have been created for children and teenagers : 112 Percentage of U.S. Internet users aged 11 or younger who will participate in such virtual worlds this year : 37 Number of spam emails sent for every one that receives a response : 12,414,000 Estimated number of U.S. adults who believe the media did not adequately cover Michael Jackson’s death : 6,500,000 Years after his escape that Pepe, a hippopotamus from Pablo Escobar’s collection, was hunted down and killed in July : 3 Price for which North Carolina drug dealers are selling “ecstasy” tablets in the shape of Barack Obama’s face : $10 Portion of each tablet that is actually caffeine : 1/2 Percentage of unemployed Americans who take a nap each day : 39 Percentage of employed Americans who do : 31
Figures cited are the latest available as of August 2009. Sources are listed on page 63. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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Percentage of U.S. teens who are currently employed : 29 Number of years since recordkeeping began in 1948 in which this percentage has been so low : 0 Number of states where it is currently legal for schools to use corporal punishment on disabled students : 20 Chances that an American child currently held in an urban juvenile detention center has a mental illness : 2 in 3 Number of Mexican children deported on their own from the United States last year : 18,129 Percentage change since 1992 in the annual number of U.S. workplace fatalities among Hispanics : +76 Change among U.S. workers as a whole : –10 Percentage after five years by which the pay of U.S. workers laid off in a recession lags that of those who kept their jobs : 30 Percentage after t wenty years : 20 Chance that such a worker will ever regain his or her income level : 1 in 4 Last year in which the unemployment rate in what is now Silicon Valley was as high as today : 1949 Portion of major-studio motion pictures in 2003 and last year, respectively, that were shot in California : 2/3, 1/3 Nightly rate that one San Diego hotel charges for a “Survivor” room, which lacks a bed, towels, and toilet paper : $19 Percentage below the asking price at which Hugh Hefner sold his California home in August : 36 Last year that the U.S. divorce rate was as high as in 2008 : 1970 Percentage of U.S. women today who are “always, frequently or sometimes” embarrassed by their feet : 57 Damages sought, in a defamation suit, by a Chicago landlord from a tenant who complained about mold via Twitter : $50,000 Amount that Israel’s foreign ministry has budgeted to create an “Internet Fighting Team” : $150,000 Percentage of white Americans in August who said they considered Fox News “reliable” : 46 Percentage of black and Latino Americans, respectively, who did : 5, 11 Number of U.S. Army public-affairs specialists who have embedded with corporations for media training since 2001 : 54 Number who have done so at Fox News : 5 Year by which, under international law, the U.S. government must destroy a cache of chemical weapons in Kentucky : 2012 Year by which this is expected to occur, even under “an accelerated schedule” : 2021 Minimum number of chemical-weapons leaks that have occurred there so far this year : 4 Percentage of fish sampled from 291 U.S. streams for a recent study that were found to be contaminated with mercury : 100 Number of times that Benson, a 64-pound British carp, was caught before dying of mysterious causes in August : 63 Number of years he was voted “Britain’s Favourite Carp” by a U.K. fishing magazine : 1 Number of British pubs that have closed since 2007 : 4,030 Percentage change during the past year in U.S. sales of Wild Turkey specialty bourbons : +88 Minimum number of refugees today whose displacement is due to religious intolerance : 9,000,000 Number of Indian headdresses that could be made from the feathers of all U.S. turkeys eaten at Thanksgiving : 43,212,000 Percentage of all U.S. health-care spending that goes to treating conditions caused by obesity : 9 Percentage of U.S. health-care workers who say they would refuse to work during a pandemic flu emergency : 16 Percentage of Americans who think the government should “stay out of Medicare” : 39 Chance that an American who does not believe Barack Obama was U.S.-born also approves of his job as president : 1 in 6 Percentage change in the volume of the average human brain during the past 10,000 years : –10 Gallons of blood pumped so far by arti ficial hearts in humans : 165,000,000 Estimated length of human nose removed by U.S. plastic surgeons each year, in feet : 5,469 Factor by which this exceeds the length of George Washington’s nose on Mount Rushmore : 260
Figures cited are the latest available as of September 2009. Sources are listed on page 68. “Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.
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