Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Census book has lots of data Date: Tue, 3 Nov 92 15:19:55 EST Message-ID: \SE A;NATION \SS (WS) \HD Census book has lots of data \BY Kenneth Eskey \CR SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE Suppose your buddy at the bus stop says: "Jane, you're a smart cookie, but here's one you'll never get. What are the three favorite sports in the United States?" "That's easy," you reply. "Walking is the most popular sport, followed by swimming and biking. Among 26 sports in a 1990 survey, racquetball ranked 25th and cross-country skiing ranked last." "How do you know that?" your pal inquires. "It's on Page 241," you reply. "Ask me how many real estate women have red hair, were divorced at the age of 23 and own a recording of 'Piano Man' by Billy Joel." "OK, how many?" "I don't know," you reply. "It's not in the book." If you like numbers, the U.S. Census Bureau is issuing this week its 112th edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, a document so thick (nearly 1,000 pages) and so crammed with data (1,414 tables) that all brain cells will be short-circuited by the time you reach the percentage of households with bank credit cards on Page 505. Here, in no particular order, are numbers from the book: * About 189 million Americans are old enough to vote. One in nine is black. States with the highest percentages of voting-age blacks are Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina. * States with the largest number of American Indians in 1990 were Oklahoma, 252,000; California, 242,000; Arizona, 204,000; and New Mexico, 134,000. * There were 763,000 mobile homes and trailers among the housing units in Florida in 1990, the most for any state. * Texas executed 37 prisoners and Florida 24 during the 1980s, the highest among the states. Nationally, there were 2,356 prisoners on death row at the end of 1990, up from 595 in early 1980. * The price of a 1-megabit DRAM chip fell from $162.50 in 1985 to $6.33 in 1990. * The number of American college students studying Japanese increased from 11,500 in 1980 to 45,700 in 1990. * In 1990, the three leading metropolitan areas in retail sales per household were St. Cloud, Minn., $36,640; Portland, Maine, $32,650; and Honolulu, $31,340. The national average was $19,488. * Fifty-nine percent of households had cable television in 1991. Seventy-two percent had a VCR. * For black males 15 to 19, the firearm homicide rate in 1988 was more than 11 times the rate for white males, but the firearm suicide rate was nearly twice as high for white males. * The number of births to unmarried mothers jumped 64 percent (to 1.1 million) from 1980 to 1989. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM