Number of different forms of torture the Syrian government is suspected of having used during the country’s civil war : 72
Factor by which women are more likely than men to develop P.T.S.D. over the course of their lives : 2.5
Average penalty, in lost vacation days, for N.Y.P.D. officers the department finds to have committed domestic violence : 30
For officers the department finds to have been discourteous to a supervisor : 60
Rank of 2018 among the deadliest years since 1990 for cyclists in the United States : 1
For pedestrians : 1
Percentage of Uber riders who never tip : 60
Who always tip : 1
Percentage by which male riders give higher tips to female drivers than to male drivers : 12
Value of the personal possessions that the average American lost while drinking alcohol last year : $192
That the average North Dakotan lost : $380
Percentage by which new plastic was more expensive than recycled plastic in 2018 : 20
By which recycled plastic is now more expensive : 19
Number of grams of plastic that the average person ingests per week : 5
Percentage of U.S. gamers who say they have skipped a meal to continue playing video games : 38
Who say they have skipped a shower : 25
Average number of minutes that teens in households making $100,000 or more per year spend on screens for leisure each day : 409
That teens in households making $35,000 or less per year do : 512
Number of states that have passed or proposed laws allowing students to take days off for mental health : 4
Chance that a millennial has voluntarily left a job for mental-health reasons : 1 in 3
That a Gen Z-er has : 1 in 2
Percentage of U.S. schools that have at least one police officer stationed inside a school building : 40
Factor by which U.S. public school districts’ spending on email-monitoring services has increased since 2013 : 2
Minimum number of U.S. colleges and universities that track prospective students’ web activity : 33
Minimum number of states that use artificial intelligence to grade student essays : 21
Estimated number of people who could go unaccounted for in the 2020 census because of an “increased climate of fear” : 4,000,000
Minimum number of polling places that states in the South have closed since 2012 : 1,327
Portion of those that were in Texas : 1/2
Percentage of Republicans who regard the Democratic party as “too extreme” : 76
Of Democrats who regard the Republican party as such : 76
Average effective tax rate, as a percentage of income, paid by the richest 400 households in the United States in 2018 : 23
By the poorest half of American households : 24
Percentage of all public tweets from U.S. adults that come from people 50 and older : 29
Percentage of public political tweets that do : 73
Percentage of white Americans who say they follow local news very closely : 28
Of black Americans : 46
Portion of new digital New York Times subscriptions in 2018 that were for its cooking or crossword apps : 1/3
Percentage by which owning a dog lowers one’s risk of death : 24
Number of states expected to lose the majority of their summer state-bird populations by 2050 : 7
January Index Sources
1 Syrian Network for Human Rights (Gaziantep, Turkey)
2 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
3, 4 Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (NYC)
5, 6 U.S. Department of Transportation
7–9 Bharat Chandar (Stanford, Calif.)
10, 11 American Addiction Centers (Brentwood, Tenn.)
12, 13 Plastics News (Detroit, Mich.)
14 Kala Senathirajah (Newcastle, Australia)
15, 16 Limelight Networks (Scottsdale, Ariz.)
17, 18 Common Sense Media (San Francisco)
19 National Alliance on Mental Illness (Arlington, Va.)
20, 21 Qualtrics (Provo, Utah)
22 Future of Privacy Forum (Washington)
23 Brennan Center for Justice (NYC)
24 Washington Post
25 Todd Feathers (NYC)
26 The Urban Institute (Washington)
27, 28 Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (Washington)
29, 30 Pew Research Center (Washington)
31, 32 Gabriel Zucman, University of California, Berkeley
33–36 Pew Research Center
37 New York Times
38 Caroline Kramer, Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto)
39 National Audubon Society (San Francisco)
