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Life in America: A Portrait
By Ray Remington, Jr.
Do numbers paint a portrait of a life style? Recently the U.S. Census Bureau released the 999-page Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007, providing a picture of some aspects of life as it will be in the new year.
For example, in 2007 it is expected that adults and adolescents in the United States will spend almost five months -- 3,518 hours -- exploring the Internet, watching television, reading daily newspapers and listening to music on various personal devices. They'll invest an average of $937 on media.
Issued by the U.S. Census Bureau, the 126th annual compendium of amazing facts and obscure details is not an easy read. The type is tiny, the tables of data endless. Somewhere in there, America is buried -- the habits, pastimes and future of its people.
Almost impenetrably thick, the report could keep trivia buffs, numbers fanatics and trend forecasters going for months. Government statistics coexist in the abstract with research by nonprofit organizations, private industry and international agencies.
One of the main findings predicts that Americans will be more electronically inclined -- or enslaved -- than ever in 2007.
They'll be parked in front of their TVs for 65 days and on the Internet for more than a week, according to projections from a communications industry forecast. They'll spend 41 days listening to radio.
Adults will invest an entire week in reading daily newspapers. Along with teenagers, they'll put in another week listening to recorded music. And they'll buy more than 3 billion books next year.
The report also found that 97 million adult Internet users looked for news online in 2005, 16 million used a social or professional networking site, and 13 million created a blog.
"The report is pretty accurate," said Gerald Celente, founder of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y. "People are more electronically connected and less humanly connected. There's an expression called PDA -- public displays of affection. They've even put that in techno jargon, and it's unacceptable. It's disconnecting people.
"This whole MySpace phenomenon -- 'I have 800 friends on MySpace,' " Celente said sarcastically. "They're not your friends. You don't know who these people are. It shows how far removed we are from what friendship is and what passion is. We're trying to make technology replace what we've lost humanly. We're getting more and more isolated and less and less human."
If the country's adults are electronic junkies, its younger residents are less idealistic than they used to be. In 1970, 79 percent of college freshmen wanted to discover "a meaningful philosophy of life," according to the abstract. Last year, 75 percent of those entering college said their main goal was "being very well off financially."
"Look at the role models they're following," Celente said. "Baby Boomers have become the biggest sellouts and hypocrites of any generation. They built the McMansions and bought the SUVs."
In terms of wealth, more than half of U.S. households owned stocks or mutual funds in 2005. Five years ago, more than a half-million of the nation's millionaires -- there were 3.5 million in 2001 -- lived in California. And 3,000 lived in Vermont. The average tax refund in 2003 was $2,154.
The report contains about 1,400 tables, with data ranging from how many trips people made to the emergency room to the number of crustaceans on the endangered species list.
A person who wades through all of them will come to a number of revealing, bizarre or pointless conclusions. For example: The retail price of a gallon of milk leapt to $3.24 in 2005 from $2.79 in 2000. Americans in 2004 drank lots of bottled water, more than 23 gallons per capita. Ninety-eight percent of their footwear was imported.
One unsurprising fact is that life is more expensive all the time. For a family of four in December 2000, the weekly cost of food on the "thrifty plan" was $88.40. Five years later, it had climbed to $102.50. At the other extreme, eating on the "liberal plan" jumped from $169.40 to $195.60 per week.
A few other morsels: There were 13,034,000 hunters in the United States in 2001 and 4,100,000 cheerleaders in 2004. And there were 8,035 certified organic growers in the country in 2003.
Finally, there is this: Last year, residents of 1.4 million homes said their neighborhoods smelled so bad that they wanted to move.
The Statistical Abstract costs $39 for the hardbound edition and $35 for the softbound edition. It can be ordered online at bookstore.gpo.gov. (Source U.S. Census Bureau)
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