Harper’s Index

Number of the one hundred countries with the world's highest birthrates that have approved the abortion pill RU-486: 0¹

Change in the abortion rate in France since RU-486 was introduced there in 1988: -4²

Price for which an eight-year-old Colorado girl was offered for sale by her mother over the Internet last year: $4,000³

Number of couples who will each receive $5,000 this year from IUMA.com for naming their baby Iuma: 10⁴

Percentage change since 1991 in the number of U.S. babies abandoned after leaving the hospital: +61⁵

Number of American states in which physicians may legally prescribe clean needles to addicts: 48⁶

Number of these states in which pharmacists may legally fill such prescriptions: 26⁷

Factor by which Texas's incarceration rate has increased since 1990 for every 1 percent drop in its crime rate: 4⁸

Factor by which New York's incarceration rate has increased since then for every 1 percent drop in its crime rate: 0.7⁹

Percentage of Americans who say they would prefer being executed to serving a life sentence without parole: 48¹⁰

Ratio of the number of attacks on U.S. citizens or property in Latin America last year to those in the Middle East: 8:1¹¹

Ratio of the number of Africans killed by AIDS last year to the number killed by warfare: 19:1¹²

Factor by which the number of sovereign countries today exceeds the number in 1945: 3¹³

Ratio of the number of bushels of wheat one barrel of oil could buy in 1950 to the number it could buy today: 1:10¹⁴

Rank of the United States among the world's largest exporters of grain and importers of oil: 1¹⁵

Rank of Estonia among the world's top importers of U.S. frogs' legs in 1998: 1¹⁶

Estimated change in the size of the Russian population last year: -800,000¹⁷

Change in the number of Russian voters registered in the three months prior to Vladimir Putin's election: +1,298,090¹⁸

Percentage of the votes cast in Chechnya last March that went to Putin, according to the Russian government: 51¹⁹

Average number of Palestinians killed per day by Israeli security forces in the six years preceding the 1993 Oslo accord: 0.4²⁰

Average number killed per day in the two weeks following Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount last fall: 5.1²¹

Chances that an OPEC country discloses its poverty rate: 4 in 11²²

Chance that the poverty rate of an OPEC country that discloses it is less than 15 percent: 0²³

Ratio of the monthly salary the U.N. pays its native clerks in East Timor to what it pays its other employees there: 1:5.6²⁴

Number of Falun Gong members arrested in China who have died in, en route to, or shortly after their release from prison: 53²⁵

Days after his appointment last July that Japan's top finance regulator resigned over “suspicious” payments he'd received: 26²⁶

Months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that the United States enacted a complete embargo on trade with Japan: 5²⁷

Number of times that visiting foreign defense ministers have been injured by the Pentagon's security system since 1998: 2²⁸

Number of New York Times articles in 1990, 1992, and 1999, respectively, that mentioned the “peace dividend”: 152, 64, 9²⁹

Pounds of ordnance that can be delivered by Boeing's new X-45A, the world's first unmanned fighter jet: 3,000³⁰

Number of planes crashed by the Wright brothers before their first successful flight on December 17, 1903: 1³¹

Number of campaigns lost by the sons of George H. W. Bush before winning any: 2³²

Ratio of the average duration of an 1858 Lincoln-Douglas senatorial debate to that of a presidential debate this year: 4:1³³

Ratio of the number of glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park in 1850 to the number last year: 4:1³⁴

Number of known asteroids whose size and orbital trajectories render them “potentially hazardous” to Earth: 258³⁵

Number of the two exorcisms Pope John Paul II has performed since 1982 that the Vatican has deemed a success: 1³⁶

Minutes required to take in “the true story of Christmas” at Little Rock's Living Nativity drive-through: 2³⁷

Rank of Bill Clinton among the “most important people in the world today,” according to U.S. schoolchildren: 1³⁸

Rank of the Pope, J. K. Rowling, and God, respectively: 2, 13, 19³⁹

Rank of “myself” : 11⁴⁰

Response: March 2001, page 9

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