NY Times summary of the 2010 Statistical Abstract

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The New York Times just released this article summarizing the 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States.

Some interesting numbers:

More adults play video games than take education courses. Americans drink more bottled water than alcohol. One in 10 male students said they carried a weapon to school within the previous month. And while abortion rates keep declining, one in three births are to an unmarried woman.

--snip--

An estimated 110 billion text messages were sent on cellphones in December 2008, more than double the 48 billion in the previous December. The value of retail sales online soared from $24 billion when the decade began to $128 billion in 2007.

Meanwhile, the number of pieces of mail delivered by the Postal Service, which began declining in 2007, dipped in 2008 to the lowest in a decade. The number of daily newspapers dropped to 1,408 in 2008 from 1,480 in 2000; circulation plunged to 48.6 million copies from 55.8 million.

Women, already a majority among new recipients of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, pulled even with men among new recipients of doctoral degrees in 2007 for the first time.

About 3 in 10 people who married in the early 1990s did not stay married long enough to celebrate their 10th anniversary.

--snip--

More Americans spent their leisure time hunting with firearms than playing baseball. Twice as many bowl as play golf.

Americans are consuming more fish, wine and watermelon, more Italian cheese than American cheese, and they are drinking less milk but raising more milk cows.

If you are thinking of moving to Harare, Zimbabwe, it has the highest cost of living for Americans working for private companies abroad — 143 percent higher than Washington, D.C.

For more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/us/20census.html

and

http://census.gov/prod/www/abs/statab2006_2010.html