Trivia Treasure

And some fascinating facts

Would you believe Americans and foreigners paid 308,205,000 visits to U.S. museums in 1971? Or that children ages twelve to 17, from families earning $10,000 to $15,000, averaged 4.7 tooth fillings in the late 1960s? More to the point, would anybody care? That question did not seem to faze Commerce Department bureaucrats, who last week lovingly unveiled Social Indicators 1976, a 647-page, relentless compilation of statistics on just about everything you ever wanted to know about Bicentennial Year America. The lavishly illustrated tome was four years in the amassing. Trivia-mongers can buy it for $7 from the U.S. Government Printing Office. But scattered among all the more useless stats are some fascinating facts and projections about the nation. Samples:

Population. The U.S. population is growing about .7% a year, which is scarcely one-third as fast as the worldwide average. Since 1970, the U.S. fertility rate--number of births per 1,000 women projected over their child-bearing lifetime--has dropped dramatically, from 2,480 to 1,856.6 in 1974. At that rate the U.S. population will rise from its current 217 million to only 262 million by the year 2000.

Family life. Between 1953 and 1974, the annual number of divorces and annulments rose 150%, from 390,000 to 977,000. By 1976, the number was 1,077,000, indicating that the rate of increase in divorces was beginning to taper off.

Social welfare. Between 1950 and 1974, public and private expenditures for social programs and services (including pensions, Social Security, health, education and welfare) climbed from 13.4% to 27.3% of the Gross National Product.

Longevity. Between 1945 and 1974, the life expectancy of American men climbed from 63.6 years to 68.2; female life expectancy from 67.9 years to 75.9. The book does not include 1975 figures, which are 68.7 and 76.5 years for males and females, respectively. Internationally, Social Indicators ranked the U.S. a low 17th for males and seventh for females. The infant mortality rate dropped from 24.7 per 1,000 live births in 1965 to 16.7 per 1,000 in 1974, but the affluent country still ranked a rather poor 15th worldwide.

Crime. From 1960 to 1975, the rate of violent crime in the U.S. tripled, from 160.9 to 481.5 incidents per 100,000 people; by 1976 the rate had declined to 459.6. Among industrialized countries, the U.S. had by far the highest homicide rate: 9.8 per 100,000 people in 1973. (In 1976, though the book does not go that far, the rate dropped to 8.3.)

Adult education. The number of adults taking continuing education and training courses rose from 13 million in 1969 to 17.1 million in 1975.

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