Harper’s Index

Last calendar year in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained in value: 1999¹

Last period in which the Dow declined for four consecutive years: 1929-1932²

Percentage change since 1968 in the real value of the U.S. federal minimum wage: -37³

Factor by which Americans' total debt to private lenders for college tuition has increased since 1995: 4⁴

Factor by which industry funding for university biomedical research has increased since 1980: 22⁵

Percentage change since 1988 in the average subscription price of a U.S. scientific, medical, or technical journal: +250⁶

Number of words that the New York Times has devoted to February's shuttle accident per resulting death: 28,500⁷

Number of words that the Times devoted to 1998's U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa per resulting death: 163⁸

Percentage of Americans who believed in early March that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks: 45⁹

Weeks before this poll was taken that President Bush said that he "can't make [the] claim" of such a link: 5¹⁰

Ratio of the price of a barrel of oil in March to the price of a body bag from the U.S. military's supplier: 1:1¹¹

Estimated percentage by which the average U.S. gasoline price would rise if costs of securing oil were recouped with a tax: 29¹²

Minimum number of hydrogen-car fueling stations currently under construction in Tokyo: 4¹³

Ratio of the number of Volkswagens sold in China last year to the number sold in the United States: 4:3¹⁴

Ratio of the average garment-worker wage in China to that in Mexico: 1:3¹⁵

Percentage of Mexicans who believe that the U.S. Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico: 58¹⁶

Number of new Indonesian islands discovered by satellite analysis in February: 1,000¹⁷

Chance that a male human worldwide is a direct patrilineal descendant of Genghis Khan: 1 in 200¹⁸

Chances that a thoroughbred stallion is a patrilineal descendant of the Darley Arabian, a seventeenth-century horse: 19 in 20¹⁹

Price for a fifteen-child sleepover in the Bronx Zoo's Congo Gorilla Forest exhibit: $4,500²⁰

Per capita GDP of the Republic of Congo: $900²¹

Estimated number of bird species that have declined because of Oregon logging since 1968: 23²²

Estimated number that have increased because of logging: 2²³

Average number of days an oiled seabird survives in the wild after cleaning and release: 6²⁴

Average number of industrial compounds and pollutants that can be found2 in an American's blood and urine: 91²⁵

Average factor by which levels of uranium in the urine of Afghan test subjects last fall exceeded normal: 25²⁶

Pounds of steel discovered to have been eaten away from the head of an Ohio nuclear reactor in February 2002: 70²⁷

Thickness in inches of the warped stainless steel that remained to prevent the reactor from rupturing into the air: 3/8²⁸

Grant that the Department of Energy gave a U.S. company last November to create a new living organism: $3,000,000²⁹

Percentage, respectively, of the U.S. fathers and mothers responsible for child support who do not pay it: 26, 36³⁰

Percentage of employed U.S. mothers who think full-time mothers look down on them: 66³¹

Percentage of full-time mothers who think employed mothers look down on them: 73³²

Number of Japanese children who refused to attend school last year, according to Japan's government: 138,722³³

Fine that Britain's education minister has proposed levying on parents whose children are chronic truants: $3,900³⁴

Chance that a British military reservist called up since January has asked to be excused from duty: 1 in 8³⁵

Number of U.S. soldiers who faced disciplinary action between 1998 and 2000 for refusing an anthrax vaccine: 441³⁶

Number of U.S. doctors per pharmaceutical-sales representative in 1995 and last year, respectively: 19, 9³⁷

Estimated number of audience cell-phone calls that constituted a "telesymphony" performed last year in Austria: 5,000³⁸

Projected duration in years of John Cage's "As Slow as Possible," whose performance began last February in Germany: 639³⁹

Projected duration in months of the piece's opening three-note arpeggio: 18⁴⁰

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