Harper’s Index

Percentage of Americans in 1983 who thought it was “possible to start out poor in this country . . . and become rich”: 57¹

Percentage who think this today: 80²

Percentage of U.S. income in 1983 and today, respectively, that went to the top 1 percent of earners: 9, 16³

Average income of an African American today, expressed as a percentage of the average income of a white American: 74⁴

Average income of an American child of Mexican immigrants, expressed in the same terms: 71⁵

Chance that an article in the top U.S. newsweeklies last year was about a Latino or Latinos: 1 in 100⁶

Chances that an article about a Latino or Latinos was about immigration: 2 in 3⁷

Chance that a federal prisoner in the United States is a noncitizen: 1 in 5⁸

Percentage change since 1991 in the average fee charged by smugglers of illegal Chinese immigrants into the U.S.: +100⁹

Number of Chinese illegals who have been caught by the United States but China has so far refused to take back: 39,000¹⁰

Number of troops that China has contributed to current U.N. peacekeeping missions: 1,408¹¹

Number from the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council combined: 822¹²

Minimum number of Chinese censors who monitor Internet activity: 100,000¹³

Minimum number of different U.S. government agencies that mine the personal data of citizens: 42¹⁴

Minimum number of states that have received telemarketing calls on their federally issued emergency hot lines: 8¹⁵

Percentage of Republicans and Democrats, respectively, in October 1994 who said they were excited to vote that year: 45, 30¹⁶

Percentage who said this in June about the 2006 midterm election: 30, 46¹⁷

Months before the vote that Rep. Jim Moran (D., Va.) said he would “earmark the shit out of” legislation if his party won: 5¹⁸

Minimum amount that an Arkansas mayor has discounted a prostitute’s city water bill since 2004 in exchange for sex: $790¹⁹

Rank of AIDS and pregnancy, respectively, among the top causes of death worldwide for girls aged 10 to 19: 1,2²⁰

Number of convictions that have been handed down so far under India’s 1996 law to ban sex-determination tests: 1²¹

Estimated number of female fetuses that have been selectively aborted there since then: 4,500,000²²

Change, in hertz, in the average pitch of Australian women’s voices since 1945: ‒23²³

Factor by which the combined genetic content of bacteria in a human digestive tract exceeds that of the human genome: 100²⁴

Percentage of pharmaceutical trials in 1997 that were performed in the developing world: 3²⁵

Percentage today: 18²⁶

Minimum number of nations in which more than half of all software is pirated: 65²⁷

Number of schools and publishers that subscribe to a California company’s plagiarism-detecting database: 5,000²⁸

Chances that a college paper today is plagiarized at least in part, according to a study using the database: 3 in 10²⁹

Estimated number of Americans who get degrees each year from nonaccredited “diploma mills”: 100,000³⁰

Number of Pentagon employees who had such degrees on their résumés, in a recent congressional study: 257³¹

Chances that a recent graduate from a U.S. four-year college has attended more than one institution: 3 in 5³²

Minimum number of books in Harvard’s libraries that are bound in human flesh: 2³³

Age at which consensual sex should be legal, according to the platform of a new political party of Dutch pedophiles: 12³⁴

Year by which humans will “be having sex with robots,” according to the head of the European Robotics Research Network: 2011³⁵

Months that an Idaho man has checked out his library’s copy of The Joy of Gay Sex, to prevent others from seeing it: 7³⁶

Number of additional copies that the library has received unsolicited since this was first reported: 7³⁷

Minimum number of different vertebrate species that have homosexual sex: 300³⁸

Typical length, in minutes, of all-male dolphin orgies: 20³⁹

Chance that a British veterinarian says he or she has treated a drunk dog: 1 in 4⁴⁰

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