11/84Number of American children conceived with donated sperm and/or carried to term by surrogate mothers: 250,000
12/84Rank, among children’s most common fears, of being home alone: 1
12/84Percentage of all playground injuries that occur on the monkey bars: 55
8/84Percentage of Chicago restaurant managers who say they allow patrons to smoke cigarettes: 84
9/84Infantry platoon leaders in the Marine Corps: 243
5/85Number of murders the average American child has seen on television by the age of 16: 18,000
5/85Percentage of mothers who do not receive the court-ordered child support to which they are entitled: 28
6/85Percentage of New York City children who live below the poverty line: 40
7/85Number of children’s TV shows based on toys in 1983: 14
9/85Percentage change in the buying power of a Social Security check since 1970: +25
Percentage today: 43
11/86Percentage of Chicago public school teachers who send their children to private or parochial schools: 38
2/86Percentage of U.S. households composed of a father who works, a mother who doesn’t, and two children: 4
7/86Abortions per 1,000 live births in New York City: 852
1/87Price of a 90-minute children’s birthday party for 30 guests at Jeremy’s Place in New York City: $500
Average number of minutes per weekday the child of a nonworking mother watches television: 139
11/87Cases of child pornography investigated by the federal government in 1982: 82
4/87Estimated number of referees at children’s sporting events who are attacked each year by parents: 100
1/88Percentage of children age 4 or younger living in Israel and the occupied territories who are Arab: 50
10/88Number of Japanese children who have died since 1985 as a result of disciplinary beatings by school personnel: 5
Percentage who say that Michael Dukakis is: 8
Number introduced during the current session: 167
Average number of U.S. presidents a child can name: 4.8
12/88Percentage of child psychologists who advise parents of pre-school children to “confirm Santa’s existence”: 40
6/88Price of Video Dog, a tape offering the “experience of owning a pet without the mess and inconvenience”: $19.95
2/89Percentage increase, since 1987, in the number of children killed by guns in Broward County, Florida: 209
3/89Rank of drugs, kidnapping, and car accidents, among the dangers to children most feared by parents: 1,2,3
6/89Percentage of American fathers who say that they should share childcare equally with their wives: 74
Percentage who say that they do: 13
1/90Percentage change, since 1980, in the number of American families composed of a housewife, an employed husband, and 2 children: -21
1/90Percentage of children in 1988 who said that Pee-wee Herman was “highly qualified” to be president: 8
Percentage who said that Michael Dukakis was “highly qualified”: 8
10/90Percentage of Americans under the age of 30 who say they read a daily newspaper: 40
Percentage of Americans over the age of 50 who say they do: 65
11/90Price of a child’s bulletproof denim jacket from the Guardian Group in New York City: $500
2/90Percentage of American parents who say their grown children’s old bedrooms have been “preserved as a shrine”: 4
3/90Percentage increase, since 1977, in the number of American children diagnosed as having learning disabilities: 142
3/90Portion of all deaths worldwide that are of children under the age of 5 in developing countries: 1/3
7/90Percentage of American children under the age of 6 who say that the first U.S. flag was sewn by Betsy Ross: 15
Percentage who say it was sewn by Barbara Bush: 29
12/91Percentage of American adults under the age of 30 who say they “almost never” switch channels during commercials: 22
Percentage of Americans over the age of 60 who say this: 45
2/91Percentage of preschool children who say that if they were president they would eat ice cream for every meal: 21
7/91Number of professional baseball players who have named a child after Texas Rangers pitcher Nolan Ryan: 11
4/92Ratio of the average number of children an American mother has to the number an American welfare mother has: 1:1
4/92Chances that an American pediatrician has treated a child for a gunshot wound in the last year: 1 in 6
5/92Chances that an American child living with both biological parents will have to repeat a grade in school: 1 in 9
5/92Percentage by which the likelihood of a child becoming obese increases for every hour of TV watched per day: 2
6/92Percentage change, since 1990, in the mortality rate for Iraqi children under the age of five: +180
6/92Chances that a child in New York City lives in a household headed by neither parent: 1 in 7
6/92Percentage of American fathers who say their children should have “more sexual freedom” than they had as teenagers: 15
12/93Age at which a child’s belief in Santa Claus peaks: 4
12/93Chances that a Jewish-American child believes in Santa Claus: 1 in 4
12/93Fine levied on each of three children convicted in Texas last fall of assaulting a man dressed as Barney the dinosaur: $200
10/94Ratio of worldwide military spending, per soldier, to educational spending, per school-age child: 25:1
12/94Number of weeks Danielle Steel employed a full-time gift-wrapper last year for her seven children’s birthdays: 7
12/94Percentage of American children who say they use flattery to get their parents to buy them things: 16
3/94Number of the 61 children murdered in Chicago last year whose mothers first gave birth as teens: 47
3/94Percentage change, between 1992 and 1993, in the average birth weight of a baby born in Sarajevo: -19
5/94Number of films designated as compulsory viewing for Beijing school children by the Chinese government last fall: 34
8/94Price of holding a wedding at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace, in Yorba Linda, California: $1,500
9/94Average cost of raising a child, through college, according to Town and Country magazine: $816,303
Number of years it would take an average working American to earn this amount: 31
1/95Percentage change between 1992 and 1993 in the infant-mortality rate in New York City’s Harlem: +60
1/95Number of boys who have auditioned to play Howard Stern as a child in his autobiographical film, Private Parts: 320
2/95Percentage of Americans who favor cutting spending on “government programs for poor children”: 9
Percentage of U.S. pediatricians who do not accept Medicaid: 23
4/95Percentage of Americans over the age of 65 who say that color is a “very important” factor in buying underwear: 30
Percentage of American adults under the age of 30 who say this: 11
6/95Factor by which Harvard’s admission rate for alumni children exceeds that for other qualified applicants: 3
6/95Chances that the bedroom of an American child between the ages of ten and sixteen contains a TV set: 1 in 2
7/95Percentage change since 1970 in the number of American children born to one white and one non-white parent: +253
1/96Ratio of the infant-mortality rate in Washington, D.C., to the rate in Havana: 2:1
10/96Years since states were last allowed to distribute federal welfare funds to able-bodied, childless adults: 22
2/96Days after a baby was taken from a murdered woman’s womb last fall that Newt Gingrich blamed “the welfare state”: 4
4/96Percentage of American children of divorced parents who have not seen their father in the last year: 40
7/96Fine levied on a Swedish couple in March for naming a son Brfxxxcccxxmnnpcccclllmmnprxxvvclmnckssqlbb11116: $746
8/96Months after a child molester was paroled from prison in 1994 that a VA hospital gave him a penile implant: 10
9/96Chance that an American parent requires that children do their homework before watching TV: 1 in 12
1/97Rank of Texas, the state with the least generous welfare program, among states with the highest adolescent birth rate: 2
Rank of North Dakota, the state with the most generous program: 50
10/97Percentage change since 1994 in Prozac prescriptions or recommendations for children under the age of 12: +212
5/97Number of days before winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championship last winter that Tara Lipinski lost a baby tooth: 5
11/98Estimated number of American women arrested for child abuse since 1977 after using drugs or alcohol while pregnant: 200
5/98Factor by which having an overweight parent increases a child’s chances of becoming obese: 2
8/98Factor by which the 1915 birth weight of Frank Sinatra exceeds the average weight of a baby born in New Jersey today: 2
1/99Rank of the Budweiser frog TV-ad campaign, among the most popular commercials with children over the age of six: 1
10/99Number of confirmed deaths caused by doctored Halloween candy given to children by strangers: 0
Number of confirmed deaths caused by doctored Halloween candy given to children by their relatives: 1
2/99Percentage of his wealth that Bill Gates has pledged to donate this year for children’s vaccines in poor countries: 0.0016
3/99Number of American children crushed to death by television sets since 1990: 28
3/99Estimated chances that a U.S. child diagnosed with leukemia will be in remission five years later: 4 in 5
5/99Chance that a mother of dependent children depicted on a prime-time network TV show holds a paying job: 1 in 3
5/99Percentage of children born in New York City last year who are living in poverty: 52
7/99Average number of murders a U.S. child sees on television by the end of elementary school: 8,000
1/00Number of New York City children issued Civil Defense dog tags by 1952 to identify them after a nuclear attack: 2,500,000
10/00Price in Kenya of 100 units of nevirapine, a drug that prevents mother-to-child HIV transmission: $874
12/00Number of the one hundred countries with the world’s highest birthrates that have approved the abortion pill RU-486: 0
4/00Age in years of the first baby born in Denmark last January, according to the hospital’s computer: 100
Number of Americans who are at least this old: 62,000
6/00Average amount spent on direct advertising to U.S. children in 1983 and 1998, respectively, per child: $2.68, $36.60
1/01Days after Al Gore’s birth in 1948 that the States’ Rights Party nominated Senator Strom Thurmond for president: 108
2/01Minimum annual “baby bonus” that the government of Singapore pays couples who have a second child: $500
3/01Annual number of U.S. elementary school students who play The Stock Market Game, a 10-week trading simulation: 200,000
Additional amount they may borrow on margin: $100,000
3/01Percentage of Washington children who completed an 8-year antismoking program in the 1990s who now smoke regularly: 25.4
8/01Months after his election in February that Sharon criticized Palestinians for “sending children to the front”: 2
9/01Percentage change since 1999 in U.S. sales of hardcover books for adults and children, respectively: -12, +13
9/01Percentage of African-American children in the South attending majority-white schools in 1976 and 1996, respectively: 38, 35
9/01Number of U.S. presidents who have held a Ph.D.: 1
Number who have said, “You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test”: 1
9/01Minimum number of countries in which at least half the children are no longer in school by the age of eleven: 11
11/02Ratio of Japanese killed in 1945’s U.S. atomic-bomb attacks to Iraqi children killed due to U.N. sanctions: 1:3
12/02Chances that a child fed ”booger”-flavored jelly beans at a trade show this fall said they tasted like the real thing: 4 in 5
6/02Chance of contracting a “fairly common” form of colon cancer reported on in the New York Times April 4: 1 in 8,000
Chance of a child contracting the “rare disease” neuroblastoma, as cited by another Times article the same day: 1 in 7,000
8/02Years that a Nigerian woman appealing a sentence of death by stoning in March will be allowed to live to wean her baby: 1.5
8/02Number of nations besides Somalia and the United States that have yet to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child: 0
4/03Percentage of applications from alumni’s children accepted by Middlebury College in 1990 and 2002: 70, 45
Percentage of applications from non-alumni African Americans accepted in those years: 57, 57
5/03Percentage, respectively, of the U.S. fathers and mothers responsible for child support who do not pay it: 26, 36
5/03Number of Japanese children who refused to attend school last year, according to Japan’s government: 138,722
5/03Fine that Britain’s education minister has proposed levying on parents whose children are chronic truants: $3,900
6/03Average quality-of-life rating researchers assign U.S. children with cancer, on a scale of 1 to 100: 69
7/03Total child support that went unpaid in Clark County, Nevada, in the last year: $63,100,000
8/03Number of candy-bar wrappers that Cadbury’s new anti-obesity campaign offers to exchange for a basketball: 90
Minimum hours of basketball required for an 85-pound child to burn off the calories from that many candy bars: 100
9/03Rank of measles among diseases that kill the most children worldwide each year and can be prevented by vaccine: 1
Cost of vaccinating the 745,000 children who died from the disease in 2001: $558,750
10/04Chance that a southern Sudanese woman will die in childbirth: 1 in 9
12/04Estimated average price of a female newborn in a Bulgarian infant-selling ring busted this summer: $6,000
Estimated average price of a male newborn: $18,000
2/04Number of a Texas toddler’s burned fingers amputated in 1992 after she was left in a car with her mother’s lit cigarette: 9.5
Settlement Philip Morris paid the girl’s family last May: $2,000,000
3/04Years of insurance that the money lost annually to health-care fraud and overbilling could buy every uninsured U.S. child: 3
5/04Median household income a pair of U.S. single mothers would have if they married each other: $40,568
Ratio of the average number of television sets to the number of children: 7:2
6/04Chance that a British infantry recruit’s reading and writing skills are no better than the average 11-year-old’s: 1 in 2
8/04Minimum number of developing countries whose adolescent birth rate is lower than that of Phillips County, Arkansas: 94
9/05Average amount an Ohio man paid children to berate him for being obese, until he was arrested in April: $30
3/06Average percentage decline in U.K. child injuries during weekends when a new Harry Potter book is released: ‒46
3/06Number of half-siblings who have found each other on a website for children of anonymous sperm donors: 1,316
6/06Ratio of negative portrayals of teachers on U.S. children’s TV shows to positive portrayals: 3:1
Ratio for portrayals of adults in general: 10:1
7/06Average number of extra calories children consume for every hour of television they watch: 167
7/06Rank of atheists among minorities whom Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry: 1
Rank of Muslims and African Americans, respectively: 2, 3
9/06Average income of an African American today, expressed as a percentage of the average income of a white American: 74
Average income of an American child of Mexican immigrants, expressed in the same terms: 71
10/07Chance that a child of immigrants to Germany is granted a spot at a college-preparatory high school: 1 in 7
10/07Total amount that U.S. Catholic dioceses have paid out since 2002 in child sex-abuse settlements: $1,073,000,000
12/07Percentage of shopping-mall and party Santas who believe that children “lie when they say they’ve been good”: 54
4/07Percentage of all Guatemalan infants who are adopted by Americans: 1
5/07Rank of money and God, respectively, among “the very best thing[s] in the world” to British children under 10: 1, 10
5/07Portion of all Iranians who are under the age of 30: 3/5
8/07Percentage of British children aged seven to eleven who say they “worry about global warming”: 34
6/08Estimated percentage of the 143 million pounds of U.S. beef recalled in February that had already been eaten: 50
Number of assaults on the homeless in 2005 and last year, respectively: 86, 160