Index Archive

Number of Americans who renounced their citizenship in 2011

: 1,781

Portion of American consumers currently being targeted by third-party debt collectors

: 1/7

Average cost of an American wedding

: $25,631

Percentage increase last year in the amount Americans spent on full-service wedding planners

: 40

Amount Mazda will give to the NEA for every child who gets a parent to take a test-drive

: $25

Portion of black American households that have no assets other than a car

: 1/4

Number of discrimination complaints received by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2011

: 99,947

Rank of that number among the highest in the agency’s history

: 1

Total advertising revenue of the U.S. newspaper industry in 2011

: $23,900,000,000

Of Google

: $36,500,000,000

Estimated percentage of orders submitted by high-frequency stock traders that are canceled

: 95

By which they outearn the median newlywed Hispanic couple

: $36,222

Percentage of Detroit homicides in 2011 that were ruled “justifiable”

: 10

Amount the average U.S. worker spends annually on coffee

: $1,092

Estimated decrease in metric tons of cocaine consumed in the United States each year between 1998 and 2008

: 102

Amount a Barcelona non-profit is paying the Catalonian village of Rasquera to lease land for marijuana growing

: $1,719,171

Estimated percentage of the village’s population that will be employed by the growers

: 30

Portion of Sudan’s oil exports bought by China last year

: 2/3

Date on which a Slovakian government agency opened online voting to name a bridge over the Morava River

: 2/21/2012

Percentage of voters who sought to name the bridge after Chuck Norris

: 75

Number of babies born in Alberta, Canada, last year who were given the name “Unique”

: 2

Number of insect fragments allowed by the FDA in a standard jar of peanut butter

: 153

Rank of this number among the highest on record

: 2

Cost to become a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis

: $250,000

Minimum number of U.S. citizens who have disclosed offshore accounts under IRS amnesty programs since 2009

: 33,000

Percentage of its profits that GE paid in federal taxes in the past decade

: 2.3

Percentage of the income gains in the first year of the recovery that went to 1 percent of U.S. earners

: 93

Maximum decibels at which the cabin crew may whisper in the “Upper Class Dream Suite” on Virgin Atlantic flights

: 30

Number of hours Dream Suite crew members must spend with a “whispering coach”

: 6

Percentage of lawyers and fast-food workers, respectively, who say their jobs may make the world worse

: 3.6, 42.3

Factor by which fleas that fed on Jurassic dinosaurs were larger than today’s common house flea

: 10

Amount by which the median U.S. newlywed white wife and Asian husband outearns the median newlywed white couple

: $11,800

Number of rodent hairs

: 5

Percentage of doctors who admit to having lied to a patient within the past year

: 11

Percentage increase since 2006 in the number of people going to emergency rooms for routine dental problems

: 16

Portion of all wealth in the United States that is controlled by people over the age of forty-two

: 9/10

Percentage of African countries in which the median age is twenty or younger

: 75

Number of countries in which births are unnaturally male-biased

: 23

Portion of the world’s population that lives in those countries

: 4/10

Amount of a USAID grant to create a Pakistani version of Sesame Street

: $10,000,001

Harper’s Index

Debug