Percentage change in the past twenty-five years in the Consumer Price Index : +41
In the price of beer : +40
Of books : –1
Number of students currently attending the thirteen Washington, D.C., public schools expected to close this year : 2,633
Number of them who are white : 2
Percentage increase in per-student spending at major public U.S. colleges since 2005 : 23
In per-student spending on college athletes : 61
Percentage of U.S. college graduates who are women : 51.1
Of Fortune 500 CEOs who are : 4.2
Value of the Girl Scout cookies a South Carolina man stole from a warehouse this February : $18,900
Amount the NIH has awarded in grants since 2011 to study the correlation between obesity and homosexuality : $1,520,000
Estimated amount by which federal tax revenue will increase if the Defense of Marriage Act is overturned : $35,000,000
Percentage change since 1970 in the portion of U.S. children growing up in single-parent households : +133
Amount North Dakota’s attorney general requested the state to budget for legal challenges to its new abortion laws : $400,000
Portion of English children born out of wedlock in 1981 : 1/5
In 2011 : 1/2
Number of Falkland Islands residents who voted in favor of remaining part of the United Kingdom in a March referendum : 1,513
Who voted against : 3
Percentage of state-owned land in the West Bank allocated by the Israeli government for Palestinians : 0.7
For Israeli settlers : 51
Amount awarded in March to a paraplegic man trapped for thirty minutes in Disneyland’s “it’s a small world” ride : $8,000
Estimated number of minutes needed to fill out the benefit paperwork required by Obamacare : 45
Percentage change since Obama took office in the number of veterans waiting more than a year for federal benefits : +2,231
Estimated number of patients a Brazilian doctor is suspected of having killed in order to free up hospital beds : 300
Estimated number of chicks killed in a March fire at a Perdue “research facility” : 8,000
Portion of U.S. river miles capable of supporting “healthy biological communities,” according to the EPA : 1/5
Percentage of U.S. sheriffs who have vowed to refuse to enforce any new federal gun-control legislation : 14
Amount a Tucson mayoral candidate has raised to give out free guns in the city’s high-crime neighborhoods : $13,000
Percentage of the airtime on Fox News that is dedicated to opinion : 55
Of the airtime on MSNBC : 85
Percentage of personal income the average American making more than $200,000 a year gives to charity : 4.2
Percentage the average American making between $50,000 and $100,000 a year gives : 6
Chance that a white American thinks antiwhite bias is more prevalent than antiblack bias : 1 in 2
Portion of religious Americans who believe in reincarnation : 1/4
Portion of nonreligious Americans who do : 1/4
Percentage of known human genes that are patented : 100
Portion of those caught in possession of drugs by the U.S. Border Patrol who are U.S. citizens : 3/4
Number of ploughshare tortoises found in a suitcase at a Thai airport in March : 54
Estimated world population of ploughshare tortoises : 400
June Index Sources
1–3 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; 4,5 Harper’s research; 6,7 American Institute for Research (Washington); 8 U.S. Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.); 9 Fortune (N.Y.C.); 10 Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office (Spartanburg, S.C.); 11 National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Md.); 12 Adam Stevenson (Ann Arbor, Mich.); 13 Third Way (Cambridge, Mass.); 14 Office of the Attorney General (Bismarck, N.D.); 15,16 Office for National Statistics (Newport, England); 17,18 Falkland Islands Government (Stanley); 19,20 Bimkom–Planners for Planning Rights (Jerusalem); 21 David Geffen Law (Santa Monica, Calif.); 22 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 23 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; 24 Ministério da Saúde (Curitiba, Brazil); 25 Perdue Headquarters (Salsbury, Mass.); 26 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; 27 Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (Mesa, Ariz.); 28 Armed Citizens Project (Houston); 29,30 Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (Washington); 31,32 Chronicle of Philanthropy (Washington); 33 Michael Norton, Harvard Business School (Boston); 34,35 The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (Washington); 36 Christopher Mason, Weill Cornell Medical College (N.Y.C.)/Jeffrey Rosenfeld, New Jersey Medical School (Newark); 37 Center for Investigative Reporting (Berkeley, Calif.); 38,39 International Union for Conservation of Nature, Tortoise & Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group (Arlington, Va.).
