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Last Month’s Index
[ July 2011 ]

Harper’s Index

Last Month’s Index
Next Month’s Index
Adjust

As measured by the “unimproved” metric

: 10.7%
July 2011 • Source: Shadowstats.com (San Francisco)

Incidents of suspected mortgage fraud in 2010

: 70,472
July 2011 • Source: Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, U.S. Department of the Treasury (Vienna, Va.)

Percentage change in such incidents since 2000

: +1,900
July 2011 • Source: Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, U.S. Department of the Treasury (Vienna, Va.)

Date on which U.S. student-loan debt is expected to reach $1,000,000,000,000

: 12/1/2011
July 2011 • Source: FinAid (Cranberry Township, Pa.)

Chance that an American who earned a bachelor’s degree in 2008 will be paying off student loans in 2028

: 1 in 3
July 2011 • Source: FinAid (Cranberry Township, Pa.)

Percentage of private-sector workers with pension plans in 1979 whose plans were defined-benefit

: 62
July 2011 • Source: Employment Benefit Research Institute (Washington)

Today

: 7
July 2011 • Source: Employment Benefit Research Institute (Washington)

Minimum number of times the calculation of the Consumer Price Index has been “improved” since 1980

: 20
July 2011 • Source: Shadowstats.com (San Francisco)

Current rate of inflation, officially

: 3.2%
July 2011 • Source: Shadowstats.com (San Francisco)

Portion who thought that the capture of Saddam Hussein would

: 3/5
July 2011 • Source: NBC News (Washington)

Chance that a retiree reports spending more savings than planned to meet basic expenses last year

: 1 in 3
July 2011 • Source: Employee Benefit Research Institute (Washington)

Percentage increase since last year in roadside calls to AAA from drivers who have run out of gas

: 14
July 2011 • Source: American Automobile Association (Heathrow, Fla.)

Minimum percentage of U.S. electricity that is consumed by marijuana growers

: 1
July 2011 • Source: Evan Mills (Berkeley, Calif.)

Percentage of Americans who think the federal government has too much power

: 58
July 2011 • Source: Gallup (Washington)

That lobbyists do

: 71
July 2011 • Source: Gallup (Washington)

Amount spent on lobbying in 2000

: $1,600,000,000
July 2011 • Source: Center for Responsive Politics (Washington)

In 2010

: $3,500,000,000
July 2011 • Source: Center for Responsive Politics (Washington)

Number of public statues of individuals in the United States

: 5,193
July 2011 • Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington)

Amount FEMA is demanding from natural-disaster claimants to whom it mistakenly gave funding

: $21,908,141
July 2011 • Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Portion of Americans who think the death of Osama bin Laden will make it easier to “win the global war on terror”

: 2/5
July 2011 • Source: NBC News (Washington)

Percentage of Americans who feel safer since bin Laden was killed

: 16
July 2011 • Source: CBS News/the New York Times (N.Y.C.)

Who feel less safe

: 14
July 2011 • Source: CBS News/the New York Times (N.Y.C.)

Percentage likelihood established in a 2009 study by a UCLA geographer that bin Laden was in Abbottabad

: 88.9
July 2011 • Source: Thomas Gillespie, University of California, Los Angeles

Date of a classified memo, released by WikiLeaks, suggesting he was there

: 9/10/2008
July 2011 • Source: The Telegraph (London)

Amount bin Laden paid to replace each cricket ball hit into his compound, according to a local boy

: $0.59
July 2011 • Source: CNN (Abbottabad, Pakistan)

Length in years of the contract a Dutch soccer team offered a one-year-old boy after seeing him kick soccer balls on YouTube

: 10
July 2011 • Source: VVV-Venlo (Venlo, Netherlands)

Chance an item of girls’ clothing sold in the United States has “sexualizing” characteristics, according to a May study

: 1 in 3
July 2011 • Source: Sarah K. Murnen, Department of Psychology, Kenyon College (Gambier, Ohio)

Percentage by which a person born in the spring is more likely than one born in the fall to become anorexic

: 31
July 2011 • Source: Giulio Disanto, The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford (Oxford, England)

Value of currency eaten by termites at a bank in Uttar Pradesh, India, in April

: $221,900
July 2011 • Source: Indian Embassy (Washington)

Size of India’s annual deficit in female births, based on 2011 census data

: 600,000
July 2011 • Source: Harper's research

Estimated number of people in the developing world employed collecting virtual resources for online gamers

: 100,000
July 2011 • Source: Tim Kelly, the World Bank (Washington)

Chance that a Russian believes the sun revolves around the earth

: 1 in 3
July 2011 • Source: Russian Public Opinion Research Center (Moscow)

Chance that a U.S. high school biology teacher is an advocate of evolution

: 1 in 4
July 2011 • Source: Eric Plutzer (University Park, Pa.)

Percentage of Mississippians who are unhappy with the outcome of the Civil War

: 27
July 2011 • Source: Public Policy Polling (Raleigh, N.C.)

Date on which a Mississippi River–themed museum in Memphis was closed due to the flooding Mississippi

: 5/6/2011
July 2011 • Source: Riverfront Development Corporation (Memphis, Tenn.)

Minimum percentage of mortgages in Las Vegas that are currently “underwater”

: 70
July 2011 • Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Las Vegas)

Number that depict women

: 394
July 2011 • Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington)

Portion of all 800-numbers held by one Philadelphia company that redirects calls to phone-sex lines

: 1/4
July 2011 • Source: Associated Press (N.Y.C.)

Opening-weekend box-office draw in Hong Kong of Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, a pornographic 3D movie

: $1,660,031
July 2011 • Source: Ray Subers, Internet Movie Database (Los Angeles)

Of Iron Man 2

: $1,529,782
July 2011 • Source: Ray Subers, Internet Movie Database (Los Angeles)
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