Number of U.S. states that observe a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and a Robert E. Lee holiday on the same day : 3
Estimated portion of black U.S. men who are ineligible to vote because of a felony conviction : 1/8
Number of prison inmates per 1,000 people in China : 1.2
In Russia : 4.8
In the state of Louisiana : 13.4
Estimated average amount Louisiana hospitals bill patients for compiling rape kits : $2,000
Percentage of active U.S. physicians who are men : 68
Percentage of the 300 highest-paid physician-consultants to pharmaceutical and medical-device companies who are : 90
Portion of U.S. women between the ages of 18 and 24 who have been stalked online : 1/4
Percentage of U.S. women who work in the restaurant industry : 7
Percentage of U.S. workplace sexual-harassment claims that originate in the industry : 37
Estimated portion of Western recruits to the Islamic State who are women : 1/10
Percentage of the U.S. population that the average American says is Muslim : 15
Percentage that actually is : 1
Average number of daily U.S. airstrikes in Syria since September 23, 2014 : 7
Estimated number of people executed by the Iraqi government last year : 60
By U.S. states : 41
Years in prison a Bahraini activist faces for ripping up a photograph of the king : 7
Days a schizophrenic inmate in North Carolina was held in solitary confinement before dying of thirst last March : 35
Amount the U.S. Navy paid the brother of a Navy intelligence official in 2012 for 349 MK-15 silencers : $1,675,750
Total amount the silencers cost in parts and labor : $10,000
Number of the silencers that effectively silenced weapons : 0
Average number of tidal floods in Washington, D.C., each year : 43
Number projected to occur annually by 2030 : 400
Date on which tobacco manufacturer Reynolds American announced a smoking ban in its headquarters : 10/22/14
Percentage of people in the European Union who say they plan to start their own business within the next year : 4
Of people in the United States : 15
In sub-Saharan Africa : 35
Number of votes the Internet Party received in Ukraine’s parliamentary elections last fall : 58,152
Number of the party’s seventeen candidates who were registered under the name Darth Vader : 5
Number of U.S. federal employees who have been put on at least one full year of administrative leave since 2011 : 263
Estimated total amount of salary those employees received during leave : $31,000,000
Amount paid at an October auction for a collection of Queen Victoria’s undergarments : $11,167
Year in which Congress instituted an automatic annual cost-of-living adjustment to Social Security payments : 1975
Number of times over the next thirty-five years that the adjustment was less than 2 percent : 2
Number of times in the past five years that it has been : 4
Percentage of Americans who believe economic conditions are getting worse in this country : 54
Date on which the Federal Reserve ended its asset-purchase program because of the economy’s “underlying strength” : 10/29/14
On which former Fed chair Ben Bernanke announced that his mortgage-refinance application had been denied : 10/2/14
Figures cited are the latest available as of November 2014.
January Index Sources
1 Harper’s research
2 The Sentencing Project (Washington)
3–5 International Centre for Prison Studies (London)
6 Department of Health and Hospitals (Baton Rouge, La.)
7 Association of American Medical Colleges (Washington)
8 ProPublica (N.Y.C.)
9 Pew Research Center (Washington)
10,11 Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (N.Y.C.)
12 Katherine E. Brown, King’s College London
13,14 Ipsos Public Affairs (Chicago)
15 U.S. Central Command (Tampa, Fla.)
16 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (N.Y.C.)
17 Death Penalty Information Center (Washington)
18 Human Rights Watch (N.Y.C.)
19 North Carolina Department of Public Safety (Raleigh)
20–22 U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria)
23,24 Union of Concerned Scientists (Cambridge, Mass.)
25 Reynolds American (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
26–28 Gallup (Washington)
29,30 Central Election Commission of Ukraine (Kiev)
31,32 U.S. Government Accountability Office
33 Westenhanger Auctioneers (Westenhanger, England)
34–36 U.S. Social Security Administration (N.Y.C.)
37 Gallup (Washington)
38 Federal Reserve Bank of New York
39 Harper’s research.
