Index Archive

Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies

: +428

Minutes of unstructured playtime

: 25

Minutes of standardized-test prep, on average, that New York City and Los Angeles kindergartners are given each day

: 24

Chance that it lagged comparable public schools

: 1 in 3

Chance that a charter school, in a Stanford study, outperformed comparable traditional public schools in math

: 1 in 6

Percentage spent by their respective private sectors

: 1.9, 0.2

Percentage of GDP spent on higher education each year by governments in the United States and Europe, respectively

: 1, 1.1

Chance that an American will suffer from a mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder in his or her lifetime

: 1 in 2

Rank of the United States among the world’s most peaceful countries, according to the 2009 Global Peace Index

: 83

Percentage change last year in North Korea’s GDP

: +3.7

Estimated value of troubled assets bought last fall by the federal government from U.S. banks, for each $1 spent

: 66?

Percentage of total U.S. home values that Americans currently own as equity

: 41

Percentage in 1945

: 84

Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large U.S. health-insurance companies

: +87

Chances that an American bankrupted 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 U.S. 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

Chances that an African American does

: 2 in 5

Chances that a liberal does

: 3 in 4

Chances that a U.S. conservative displays an “implicit preference” for white over black people in a psychological study

: 4 in 5

Number of U.S. states in which a plurality of voters currently identify as Republican

: 5

Number of Intrade’s top ten G.O.P. presidential hopefuls who will in 2012 have been out of office for two or more years

: 5

Year in which Nick Jonas, of the pop group the Jonas Brothers, intends to run for president

: 2040

Projected number of years by which the world median age will have increased by 2050

: 9

Number of countries where fertility is currently below replacement levels

: 76

Years by which the lifespan of a woman who marries a similarly younger man lags the norm

: 2

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

Percentage of the injured who were cheerleaders

: 65

Number of fatal or disabling injuries suffered by female high school athletes since 1982

: 112

Chance that both members of an unmarried couple are

: 1 in 13

Chance that both members of a married U.S. couple are obese

: 1 in 6

Estimated percentage by which brontosauruses were less massive than previously believed, according to a recent study

: 50

Estimated percentage change since 1785 in the average body size of a Western European

: +50

Percentage by which this exceeded sales of the top automobile model

: 5

Number of Little Tikes Cozy Coupes, a ride-in toy car, sold in the United States last year

: 457,000

Harper’s Index

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