A column of current statistics selected especially for Christian communicators
Ratio of lawyers to the total U.S. population: 1:323
Ratio of ministers to the total U.S. population: 1:714
Percentage of U.S. citizens who favor state restrictions that would require parental consent before a teenager has an abortion: 72
Who favor restrictions that would require doctors to inform patients about alternatives: 81
Pounds of trash produced by an average American, per day, in 1960: 2.9
Today: 5
Estimated cost of raising a first child, born in 1988, to age 17: $176,674
Percentage of Americans who are generally satisfied with their jobs: 68
With their financial situation: 78
With their family life: 71
Percentage of the workday that Americans spend goofing off: 32
Number of U.S. Sunday school students each week: 36 million
Total length of all U.S. interstate highways, in miles: 44,328
Total length of all roads built during the Roman Empire, in miles: 49,000
Percentage of U.S. mail that was third-class (commonly called “junk mail”), in 1945: 14
Percentage today: 39
Number of babies conceived in the U.S. in 1988 with sperm from anonymous donors: 30,000
Sources of Pleasure
What do people consider the greatest source of pleasure in their lives?
According to a 1989 study conducted for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Corporation, the overwhelming answer is family, selected by 63 percent of respondents.
Trailing far behind, receiving only a tenth of that response, were religious involvement (8 percent), work (6 percent), and friends (6 percent). Comments Dr. Lee Salk, clinical professor of psychology at Cornell, who interpreted the data: “Most Americans think of their families as the most important things in their lives.”
– Reported in USA Today, 10/10/89
Aging America
The rapid aging of the American population may be one of the most significant culture-shaping forces over the next generation. Between now and the year 2000, the 50-and-older group will grow by 18.5 percent. Meanwhile, the number of Americans under age 50 will grow by only 3.5 percent. The median age will climb steadily (from 33 now to 43 in 2040). Perhaps most significant, the ratio of working-age tax-payers to elderly people will shrink from the current 5:1 to only 2.5:1 in 2030. In the words of columnist Ben Wattenberg: “All that change will echo in every cranny of society: budget deficits and future Social Security shortfalls, labor and customer shortages.”
– Statistics from U.S. News & World Report, 2/13/89, and American Demographics, 5/89
Where Do Kids Learn about Sex?
Speaker Josh McDowell conducted a survey of teenagers from evangelical churches and discovered they had learned about sex from the following sources (respondents could select more than one):
* friends (28 percent)
* movies (26 percent)
* classes at school (23 percent)
* parents (23 percent)
* television (22 percent)
* church (7 percent).
Friends and movies, the leading spokespersons, aren’t encouraging abstinence, apparently, if statistics from a separate study by Seventeen magazine are any indication. According to their survey of over 2,000 teens, 24 percent of 15-year-olds have had sex. By age 18, that figure has climbed to 60 percent.
– From Group, cited in Teens & Trends, 12/88-1/89; and from USA Today, 9/22-24/89
Sources – Lawyers/ministers: Based on statistics from Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Abortion restrictions: Time, 7/17/89. Trash: World Vision, cited in The Other Side, 5-6/89. Child-raising costs: U.S. Department of Agriculture, cited in Teens & Trends. Satisfaction: 100% American by Daniel Weiss, reported in Los Angeles Daily News; Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. poll, reported in USA Today, 10/10/89, and cited in Teens & Trends. Goofing off: Almanac of the American People by Tom and Nancy Biracree (Facts on File, Inc., 1988), reported in Readers’ Digest, 9/89. Sunday school: New England Church Life, 3/89. Roads: U.S. Federal Highway Administration; Roman Empire, 27 B.C.-A.D. 476: A Study in Survival by Chester G. Starr (Oxford University Press, 1982); reported in Harper’s, 3/89. Junk mail: U.S. Postal Service, reported in U.S. News & World Report, 6/19/89. Sperm donors: U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, reported in Harper’s, 3/89.
Leadership Spring 1990 p. 95
Copyright © 1990 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
