First published December 29, 1996
This same kind of annual reflection takes place
nationally as well as personally.
Earlier this month a book about the United
States was published that is probably the most comprehensive look
at who we Americans are as can be had on the market.
The volume of 1,022 pages tells just about
everything anyone could want to know about the 260.3 million people
in the United States. Anyone can purchase a copy in softcover
for $30 or in hard cover for $35. The CD-ROM version, expected
in early 1997, goes for $50.
The book cost taxpayers $1.7 million to publish,
but it's expected to make that back in sales easily.
The book I refer to has been billed by some
journalists as ``the ultimate book of lists,'' and it can stand
against The Farmer's Almanac or any other annual almanac published
to record our wisdom and ways.
I speak of the "Statistical Abstract of
the United States 1996," which since 1878 has been keeping
record of practically everything in our lives that is quantifiable.
According to
the U.S. Census Bureau, the division of the U.S. Department of
Commerce that publishes the volume, ``it contains a collection
of statistics (over 1400 tables and graphs) on social, economic,
and international subjects.''
One can find information about population,
law enforcement, education, housing, transportation, health, government,
income, prices, employment, energy, agriculture, business, finance
and foreign commerce.
One can learn, for example, that the three
fastest growing occupations in the United States are home health
aides, human services workers, and personal and home care aides.
Or one can take the opposite tack and learn
that the three fastest declining occupations are frame wirers,
signal or track switch maintainers, and peripheral EDP equipment
operators (with directory assistance operators a close fourth).
If someone wished to migrate to that state
that has the highest average salary, he'd do well to head for
Connecticut, New Jersey or New York, which rank one-two-three
(former No. 1 Alaska, now ranks fourth).
High salaries
are not the norm in South Dakota, North Dakota, or Montana, which
rank 50-49-48.
Teachers, for example, do best in Connecticut,
Alaska, and New York (in that order), and worst in South Dakota,
North Dakota, and Louisiana.
To give some meat to these trends: The average teacher in Connecticut earns $50,045; in Louisiana, 26,461.
Elderly folks, defined as 65 or older, will most likely find others
in their age group in Florida, Pennsylvania, or Rhode Island.
Youth appears to have migrated to Alaska, Utah,
Colorado and Georgia.
The state with the highest number of people
living below poverty level is Louisiana; the state with the lowest
number below poverty level is Vermont.
Some statistics compiled in the book appear
as out-of-the-blue numbers: Americans, for example, churned 1,296
billion pounds of butter in 1994, the year covered by most of
the statistics.
The statistics in the annual abstract are presented,
as many journalists are wont to say about their product, without
fear or favor. The Commerce Department doesn't interpret in this
book.
When we learn,
for example, that the states with the fewest number of motor vehicle
deaths are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire,
we're left to ourselves to decide if that means driving is safer
in those states than in Mississippi, Nevada and Arkansas (where
the death rates are highest).
The Abstract neither interprets nor embellishes;
it just provides raw statistical information.
So don't look for a novel. As Newsday
writer Fred Bruning put it in his review, the Abstract ``is to
literature what a troop movement is to ballet.''
There are critics, like Robert J. Samuelson
of Newsweek, who are astute enough to recognize that statistics
can be shaped and conceptualized differently. Samuelson chides
Congress for not giving government statisticians enough money
to do their job properly. He's probably right.
And its probably true that we need to keep
statistics in comparison perspective, which this volume ignores.
Our infant mortality rate is down, but it remains agonizingly
high compared to that of Japan, for instance.
There's a sense in which the Abstract is fun;
and frankly, most newspaper writers who took time to review it
had lots of fun pointing to its quirky findings.
The Associated
Press noted, for example, that marriages are down but people are
spending more time with their ATM machines.
It's also true that 202 million chicken eggs
are laid every day in the nation, and two million gallons of ice
cream are produced each day.
Nevertheless, there's an underlying seriousness
to this publication.
Can anyone imagine a volume called the "Statistical
Abstract of China"? Or of Cuba? Or of Serbia?
Most of the information we have on these nations
is compiled by our own State Department; it doesn't flow freely
from Beijing or Havana.
The Statistical Abstract stands as a compilation
of what it means to provide for and augment the free flow of information
that is the hallmark of our democracy.
Readers of international
news can't have missed that in countries where unrest is rampant
and social change is being demanded those in power attempt to
control the flow of information to the citizenry.
If Congress won't buy Samuelson's argument
that they are stifling the statisticians with budget cutbacks,
perhaps they'll buy my suggestion that they may be stifling the
free flow of information that is essential to our victory in social,
economic and even military war.
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Allan R. Andrews can be reached at arandrews@aol.com