Letters on the Decline

Number of first-class letters mailed in the United States...

1994: 55 billion
2006: 42 billion

Source: United States Postal Service, Revenues, Pieces, and Weights Report

Maybe Schools Are Not So Bad

Percentage of Americans who give
the nation's public schools a grade of A or B: 21

Percentage of public school parents who give
the school their oldest child attends a grade of A or B: 64

Source: Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools

How Does Your Salary Compare?

Now you can find out. Let's say you are a librarian in Chicago, and you are wondering how your pay stacks up against the wages of your colleagues in the metropolitan area. The answer is only a click away at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Wages by Area and Occupation web site. Click on "Metropolitan Area Wage Data for 375 Metropolitan Statistical Areas," scroll down to Illinois, then click on "Chicago-Naperville-Joliet IL-IN-WI." Once there, scroll down to "Librarians" in the occupation list (under Education, Training, and Library Occupations), and you will see you are one of 5,460 librarians in the Chicago metro area.

Librarians in Chicago earned an annual average of $57,560 as of May 2006. If you want to know where you might get paid more, click on the "Librarians" link, which will take you to a page revealing that librarians get paid the most in San Jose, California—an average of $69,360. (Of course, housing prices are higher there too.) Get fun facts like these for any occupation from this enormously entertaining site.

Wanted: Spouse with Health Insurance

Eighty-five percent of Americans have health insurance, and 60 percent are covered by an employer-provided health insurance plan, according to the Census Bureau. These figures are well known and somewhat reassuring.

What is not so well known is how few of us are covered by our own employer's plan. Only 32 percent of Americans have health insurance through their own employer. Everyone else is piggybacking, getting coverage through a spouse or parent and just a divorce or birthday away from having no coverage at all.

Source: Bureau of the Census, Health Insurance Tables

National Pride

Percentage of Americans who "strongly agree" that America is a better country than most other countries...

Aged 18 to 29: 25
Aged 65 or older: 52

Source: General Social Survey

Cell Phone Bias

Sometimes the most interesting bits of information come from the most unlikely places. The latest update on cell phone use is contained in recently released estimates from the federal government's National Health Interview Survey. The stunning finding: As of the last six months of 2006, fully 29 percent of adults aged 25 to 29 are cell-phone-only users and have no landline phone. Among 18-to-24-year-olds, the proportion is 25 percent.

The abandonment of landline phones by young adults has occurred with alarming speed. The percentage of 25-to-29-year-olds with cell phones only more than tripled in the past three years, rising from just 8 percent in 2003. Survey researchers are worried. The rise of cell-phone-only households will skew results of random-digit-dial telephone surveys, they fear. "Coverage bias may exist if there are differences between persons with and without landline telephones," the report concludes.

How's this for potential bias:
(percentage of people aged 18 or older with cell phones only, by age, 2006)

Aged 18 to 24: 25
Aged 25 to 29: 29
Aged 30 to 44: 12
Aged 45 to 64: 6
Aged 65-or-older: 2

For Some, College Is the Biggest Worry

When it comes to money, what worries you the most? When Gallup asked Americans this question, retirement ranked number one. Fifty-six percent of the public is "very" or "moderately" worried about not having enough money for retirement.

Financial concerns vary by lifestage, however. The number-one financial concern of parents with children under age 18 is not having enough money to pay for their children's college expenses. Fully 68 percent of parents say they are very or moderately worried about college costs. Unlike every other financial concern, the percentage who worry about college costs does not decline as household income rises.

Avoiding the Dentist

Working-age Americans are going to the dentist less frequently. The percentage of people aged 20 to 64 who have been to a dentist in the past year fell from 66 percent in 1988-94 to a smaller 60 percent in 1999-04, according to a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics.

What explains the decline in dental care? One factor is the increasingly exhorbitant cost of a dental visit. Many Americans do not have dental insurance. Those with insurance are often dismayed to discover that it pays only pittance, leaving dental patients footing most of the bill out-of-pocket.

Perhaps because they are less likely to see a dentist, the percentage of adults who say their teeth are in excellent or very good condition fell from 30 to 26 percent during the years of the study.

Bet You Didn't Know

Percentage of households with access to
public transportation in their neighborhood

American: 54
German: 85

Source: Bureau of the Census, 2005 American Housing Survey and GESIS (German Social Sciences Infrastructure Services)

The Big Three

According to estimates by the United Nations, 175 million people (2.9 percent of the world's population) live outside their country of birth. The three nations with the most immigrants are

United States: 35 million
Russia: 13 million
Germany: 7 million

Source: People Flows in Globalization, Richard B. Freeman, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 12315

The Meaning of Gifted

Who populates the gifted classes, honors programs, and advanced placement courses in the nation's middle and high schools? The nation's elite of course.

Among children aged 12 to 17, those from high-income families and those with the most highly-educated parents are most likely to be in gifted classes, including honors and advanced placement courses. Among children in families with monthly incomes below $1,500 ($18,000 per year), only 15 percent are in gifted classes. The figure is 32 percent among children in families with monthly incomes of $6,000 or more ($72,000 per year).

The education gap is even more pronounced. Only 10 percent of children whose parents did not graduate from high school are in gifted classes. Among those whose parents have graduate-level degrees, the figure is 45 percent.

Source: Census Bureau, A Child's Day: 2003, Survey of Income and Program Participation

Bet You Didn't Know

Percentage of parents who say they never
feel angry at their children: 46.

Source: Census Bureau, A Child's Day: 2003, Survey of Income and Program Participation

In the Laundry Room

Now that most women are in the labor force, men are doing more around the house. But women still shoulder most of the burden for a variety of household chores. Which chores are most likely to be done by women rather than men?

Number one is the laundry. On an average day, 27 percent of women do at least one load of laundry compared with a much smaller 6 percent of men, according to the American Time Use Survey. Other chores predominantly shouldered by women are kitchen clean-up after a meal and housecleaning.

Some household chores are more likely to be tackled by men, such as lawn care, exterior home maintenance, and vehicle care. And of course men are still more likely to work at a paying job. Fifty percent of men and 38 percent of women go to work on an average day.

Homeownership Rate Falls Again

The homeownership rate fell for the second year in a row, dropping to 68.8 percent of households in 2006. This is down from the record high rate of 69.0 percent reached in 2004. But homeownership rates were higher in 2006 than in 2000 overall and in every age group except one. Among householders aged 45 to 54, the homeownership rate fell between 2000 and 2006.

What is behind the declining homeownership rate? The combination of high housing prices, rising interest rates, and the economic squeeze on the middle class.

Source: Census Bureau, Housing Vacancies and Homeownership, Annual Statistics 2006

Bet You Didn't Know

Percentage of Americans who describe themselves as "dog persons": 70.

Source: The Gallup Poll

Where Are Teen Workers?

The number of workers aged 16 to 19 fell by a jaw dropping 1 million between 2000 and 2005 (from 8.3 million to 7.2 million). According to projections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we ain't seen nothing yet. The number of workers in the age group will continue to decline until 2020, when the count will be only 6.0 million.

What is behind the disappearance of teens in the work force? A growing proportion are in school. Consequently, their labor force participation rate has plummeted from 52 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2005. The rate is expected to continue falling, reaching 36 percent in 2020.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review

What the World Thinks

Does the United States have a mainly positive
or negative influence in the world?

Percent answering "positive"...
Americans: 57 percent
Everyone else: 32 percent

Source: BBC survey of 26,381 people in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and the United States, WorldPublicOpinion.org

The Oldest Congress Ever

How do the demographics of Congress compare with those of the average American? This Congressional Research Service report (pdf) can tell you. It examines the age, occupations, education, religion, sex, race, Hispanic origin, nativity status, and military service of House and Senate members.

The Senate has never been older, with an average age of 60. House members are aged 55, on average, which also may be a record high (data on the age of House members has been collected only since 1907). The 109th Congress has a record number of women (85), blacks (43), and Hispanics (30), but the minority and female share is still far from representative of the U.S. population as a whole. There are 218 lawyers in Congress, as well as 13 medical doctors, 6 ministers, 2 FBI agents, and one television talk show host. Ten members of Congress were born outside the United States. This Congress has 139 veterans, 13 fewer than in the 108th Congress.

Evolution at Work

The 51 percent majority of Americans believe in evolution. A smaller 42 percent adhere to the notion of creationism, according to the Pew Research Center. In the years ahead, belief in evolution should strengthen as better educated younger generations replace older, less educated adults. Here is a look at who believes in evolution by age:

aged 18 to 25: 63%
aged 26 to 40: 57%
aged 41 to 60: 47%
aged 61 or older: 42%

Source: Pew Research Center

Bet You Didn't Know

Percentage of 18-to-25-year-olds who think
their generation is unique: 68.

Source: Pew Research Center