Percentage of Belgium’s army that is actively deployed domestically : 13
Pages of shredded files that the Stasi Records Agency in Germany has reconstructed by hand since 1990 : 1,500,000
Hours last year for which Germans were paid to use power because supply outstripped demand : 331
Number of other European Union countries that experienced negative power prices last year : 7
Minutes each day by which Finnish fathers spend more time than Finnish mothers with their school-aged children : 8
Number of other developed nations in which fathers spend more time than mothers with school-aged children : 0
Percentage by which millennial US men are likelier than women to be willing to expatriate for better parental leave : 44
Amount offered by the Indian government to caste Hindus who marry Dalits : $3,925
Number of such marriages the government plans to incentivize each year : 500
Percentage of US news stories about poverty that feature black families : 59
Of US families living under the poverty line that are black : 23
Minimum number of companies and recruiters accused of using Facebook to keep older workers from seeing job ads : 125
Number of staff the Zimbabwean government has guaranteed to Robert Mugabe as part of his retirement package : 25
Of new cars every five years : 3
Acres of land owned by John Malone, the largest private landowner in the United States : 2,200,000
Factor by which that is larger than Rhode Island : 3.3
Estimated number of New York City apartments for which tenants can pay rent in a cryptocurrency : 400,000
Number of tenants who have actually done so : 41
Date on which the drink company Long Island Iced Tea Corp. changed its name to Long Blockchain Corp. : 12/21/2017
Percentage change in its share price that day : +183
Date on which Anheuser-Busch sent barley into space to explore the possibility of brewing on Mars : 12/15/2017
Chance that an American would be more likely to buy a beer if it were brewed there : 1 in 10
Portion of Maryland’s licensed medical-marijuana dispensaries that ran out of product within a week of opening : 5/7
Number of US states that plan to use fentanyl for executions : 2
Percentage by which Americans overestimate the number of US prisoners who are foreign-born : 27
Estimated number of accidental gun deaths attributable to a surge in firearm purchases after Sandy Hook : 60
Number of hand grenades seized by Ukrainian police from civilians in 2013 : 120
Last year : 2,200
Ratio of snake-removal to fire-alarm calls that Bangkok’s fire department responded to last year : 9:1
Portion of Cabinet departments whose permanent staff shrank over the first nine months of the Trump Administration : 4/5
Net change in permanent staff at the Department of Justice : ?1,737
At the Department of Homeland Security : +1,190
Estimated number of Homeland Security employees stationed abroad : 2,000
Estimated percentage of Russians who don’t think they have enough information to have an opinion on Donald Trump : 46
Total amount donated by lobbyists registered as foreign agents during the 2016 election : $4,574,661
Percentage of this money donated to Democrats : 54
Number of write-in votes for University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban in the state’s November special election : 414
Estimated number of US private schools receiving public funding that teach a Christian curriculum : 5,071
That teach an Islamic curriculum : 70
That teach a curriculum inspired by L. Ron Hubbard : 5

Figures cited are the latest available as of January 2018. Sources are listed on page 83.
“Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.

March Index Sources

1 Consulate General of Belgium (NYC)
2 Stasi Records Agency (Berlin)
3 European Power Exchange (Paris)
4 European Commission (Brussels)
5,6 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Washington)
7 EY (Washington)
8,9 Indian Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (New Delhi)
10,11 Travis Dixon, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
12 Communications Workers of America (Washington)
13,14 Zimbabwe Permanent Mission to the United Nations (NYC)
15 The Land Report (Dallas)
16 US Census Bureau (Suitland, Md.)
17,18 ManageGo LLC (Brooklyn, N.Y.)
19 US Securities and Exchange Commission
20 Nasdaq (NYC)
21 Anheuser-Busch (NYC)
22 Rasmussen Reports (Asbury Park, N.J.)
23 Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission (Linthicum)
24 Death Row Penalty Information Center (Washington)
25 Ipsos (London)
26 Phillip Levine, Wellesley College (Mass.)
27,28 International Centre for Policy Studies (Kiev, Ukraine)
29 Bangkok Fire and Rescue Department
30–32 US Office of Personnel Management
33 US Department of Homeland Security
34 Gallup (Atlanta)
35,36 MapLight (Berkeley, Calif.)
37 Office of the Alabama Secretary of State (Montgomery)
38–40 HuffPost