Number of new Christmas films that will debut on Hallmark channels this year : 40
Percentage of the world’s internet traffic that is attributable to Netflix : 12
Percentage increase since 1996 in the average price of a movie ticket in the
United States : 106
In the average price of a concert ticket : 256
Estimated annual amount that U.S. book publishers lose to piracy : $315,000,000
Percentage of people downloading pirated e-books who make $100,000 or
more a year : 29
Number of requests Google has received since 2014 to delete search results based on the E.U.’s “right to be forgotten” law : 3,300,000
Percentage of those requests Google has granted : 45
Factor by which the U.S. public trusts law enforcement more than advertisers to use facial-recognition technology “responsibly” : 3
Amount that the Florida D.M.V. earned selling personal data in 2017 : $77,865,737
Percentage of American women aged 30 and older who receive financial help from
their parents : 49
Of American men aged 30 and older : 62
Median percentage of student-loan debt owed by white borrowers twenty years after enrolling in college : 6
Of student-loan debt owed by black borrowers : 95
Minimum number of laws in San Francisco penalizing homelessness : 24
Percentage change in calls to 9-1-1 about homeless people in San Francisco
from 2013 to 2017 : +78
Number of months for which Japanese men are legally guaranteed
paid paternity leave : 12
Percentage of Japanese fathers who take some advantage of the policy : 6
Who take all twelve months : 0.1
Percentage of U.S. adults over 55 who did freelance work this year : 29
Percentage of images in U.S. online media that feature people aged 50 or older : 15
Percentage of Americans who are older than 50 : 46
Percentage by which people who nap once or twice a week are less likely than
non-nappers to face serious heart illnesses : 48
Factor by which non-white Americans are more likely than white Americans
to be vegetarians : 3
Percentage by which U.S. sales of plant-based meat substitutes increased this year : 10
Number of states with laws prohibiting the use of the words “meat,” “burger,”
or “steak” on labels for non-animal products : 7
Rank of “well done” among the ways that Americans prefer their steaks to be cooked : 1
Chance that an American avoids drinking tap water at home because
of safety concerns : 1 in 3
Percentage of bottled water sold in the United States that is
filtered tap water : 64
Estimated amount that Americans spent on bottled water last year : $31,000,000,000
Percentage of the U.S. automobile market that is composed of
S.U.V.s and pickup trucks : 66
Of sedans : 22
Percentage of Americans who believe electric cars require gasoline to run : 42
Number of Nobel laureates in physics who have been named John : 8
Who have been named Wolfgang : 3
Who have been women : 3
Factor by which a public restroom floor hosts more bacteria than a toilet seat : 40,000
By which a kitchen sponge hosts more bacteria than a toilet seat : 17,700,000,000
Rank of kitchen cleaning among Americans’ least favorite chores : 1
Portion of Americans who say they’d give up sex for life if they never had
to do any more chores : 1/5
December Index Sources
1 Crown Media (Studio City, Calif.)
2 Sandvine (Fremont, Calif.)
3 National Association of Theatre Owners (Los Angeles)
4 Pollstar (Fresno, Calif.)
5, 6 Digimarc (Beaverton, Ore.)
7, 8 Google (Mountain View, Calif.)
9 Pew Research Center (Washington)
10 Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (Tallahassee, Fla.)
11, 12 Merrill Lynch (NYC)
13, 14 Thomas Shapiro, Brandeis University (Waltham, Mass.)
15 Jeffrey Selbin, University of California, Berkeley
16 Chris Herring (Berkeley, Calif.)
17–19 International Network on Leave Policies & Research (Kobe, Japan)
20 Edelman Intelligence (NYC)
21, 22 AARP (Washington)
23 Nadine Häusler, University of Lausanne (Switzerland)
24 Gallup (Washington)
25, 26 Plant Based Food Association (Washington)
27 YouGov (NYC)
28 Consumer Reports (Westport, Conn.)
29, 30 Beverage Marketing Corporation (NYC)
31, 32 LMC Automotive (Detroit)
33 Ford Motor Company (Detroit)
34–36 Harper’s research
37 Lisa A. Cuchara, Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Conn.)
38 Markus Egert, Hochschule Furtwangen University (Furtwangen im Schwarzwald, Germany)
39, 40 Yelp (NYC)
