Tracy Kidder’s stunning Strength in What Remains tells the unbelievable-if-it-wasn’t-true story of Deo, a Burundian medical student who barely escapes the 1994 genocide in his country and finds his way to New York City, where, penniless and speaking no English, he sleeps for a time in Central Park. Taken in by a nun, then adopted by an American family, he enrolls in Columbia University and goes on to Harvard Medical School. Then he goes back to Burundi and opens a health clinic, Village Health Works, which provides sorely needed medical services to Burundians, most of whom live in dire poverty.

Tracy Kidder writes, “He [Deo] had gleaned Burundi’s statistics from various sources. These were some he liked to cite at fund-raisers for his yet to be built clinic: an average life expectancy of about thirty-nine years; one in five deaths caused by waterborne diseases or lack of sanitation; severe malnutrition for 54 percent of children under five; for women, a one-in-nine lifetime risk of dying during childbirth; and fewer than three hundred doctors to serve a population of about seven million.” (226) Below are some striking statistics documenting the current heath status in Burundi—named the world’s poorest country by the World Bank in 2006.

8.2 million: Population total in millions

67: Percentage of the population living below the poverty line

53: Percentage of children under five who suffered from stunting due to inadequate food, low-quality diet, poor infant feeding practices, poor household management of childhood diseases and the general decline of the health system

50+: Percentage of women who deliver at home without the assistance of a qualified professional

41/1,000: Portion of children (live births) who die within four weeks of birth

64: Percentage of the population that has access to potable drinking water

32: Percentage of the population that use adequate sanitation facilities

34: Percentage of births attended to by skilled personnel

200: Number of physicians

49: Life Expectancy at birth

1100/100,000: Maternal Mortality Rate (live births)

63.1: Percentage of children under five years of age who are stunted for age

38.9: Percentage of children under five years of age who are underweight for age

Source: UNICEF

Since the 1970s the productivity of the American worker has increased steadily and the U.S. economy has grown at an impressive rate. Yet while the already-wealthy have grown considerably wealthier in this period, most Americans are no better off than they were four decades ago. Jonathan Tasini, in his new book The Audacity of Greed, calls this phenomenon “the emptying of the wage cupboard,” and he lays out the numbers underlying what is now essentially “a two-tiered earnings system made up of the very rich and the rest of us.” Here’s a sampling:

• The top earners’ share of wages, which was stable from the mid-1940s through the 1970s, nearly doubled from 1979 through 2006, from 7.3 percent to 13.6 percent. This is the result of earnings growth of 144.4 percent for the top 1 percent of earners over the past thirty years, compared to just 15.6 percent growth for the bottom 90 percent.
• Those in the upper 0.1 percent of wage earners have hit the jackpot, as their annual earnings have grown 324 percent since 1979, to over $2.2 million in 2006. As a result, the earnings of the top 0.1 percent of Americans are now 77 times greater than the earnings of the bottom 90 percent, whereas in 1979 it was just 21 times as much.
• The share of our national income hoarded by the top one percent was, as of 2006, 22.1 percent (a rise of three percentage points from 2004.) The last time it was that high was in 1928 (23.9 percent)—just as the Great Depression was about to hit with its full fury.

[Posted by Sarah Silbert]

David Owen’s The Green Metropolis makes the case for cities as sustainable communities—especially compared to suburban and rural environments. Owen supports his claim by using New York City (Manhattan, in particular) as his prime example. Statistics throughout the book demonstrate that city dwellers consume less energy and take up less space than their non-urban counterparts.

• Americans are responsible for 44 percent of the world’s total gasoline consumption.
• Approximately two-thirds of the oil consumed in the United States and Canada is used for transportation, mainly automobiles.
• In 1960, 22 percent of Americans traveled to work by public transit or on foot, while 64 percent commuted by car; by 2000, transit users and walkers had fallen to 8 percent of the total, while drivers had risen to 87 percent.
• The Atlanta metropolitan area is the biggest example of sprawl in the United States, covering approximately 8,500 square miles. 94 percent of its 5.2 million residents travel to and from work by car.
• The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-20s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T.
• 82 percent of employed Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That’s ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for workers in Los Angeles County.
• New York City’s buses carry 842 million passengers a year—more than the combined total of the next three largest American bus systems in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Photo: AP Images

[Posted by Sarah Silbert]

David Owen’s Green Metropolis: What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability makes the case for cities as sustainable communities—especially compared to suburban and rural environments. Owen supports his claim by using New York City (Manhattan, in particular) as his prime example. Statistics throughout the book demonstrate that city dwellers consume less energy and take up less space than their non-urban counterparts. Below, a sampling of these telling numbers:

* The average Manhattanite consumes gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn’t matched since the mid-20s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T.

* 82 percent of employed Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That’s ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for workers in Los Angeles County.

* The average New Yorker annually generates 7.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases, a lower rate than that of residents of any other American city, and less than 30 percent of the national average (24.5 metric tons).

* Manhattan’s density is approximately 67,000 people per square mile, or more than 800 times that of the nation as a whole and roughly thirty times that of Los Angeles.

* Vermonters use 545 gallons of water per person per year versus 146 for all New York City residents—and just 90 for Manhattan residents alone.

* New York City residents consume an average of 4,696 kilowatt-hours per household per year, less than the residents of any other part of the country. (The average Dallas household uses 16,116 kilowatt-hours, more than three times as much.)

* New York City contains 2.7 percent of the country’s population and is responsible for almost 1 percent of all the greenhouse gases produced by the United States.

* Cutting back overall U.S. per-capita greenhouse emissions to New York City’s current level would require a national reduction of 71 percent.

* New York City’s buses carry 842 million passengers a year—more than the combined total of the next three largest American bus systems in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

In his new book The Audacity of Greed, Jonathan Tasini writes that when the 2008 financial crisis hit, “tightening the belt in the elite crowd meant foregoing the fourth or fifth mansion, or perhaps hesitating on whether to plunk down millions for a new Matisse or Picasso or waiting one more year to upgrade to a fully-loaded 757 Boeing jet. They were certainly not worrying about making their car payments or paying for health care.”

Tasini argues that except for a small, greedy elite who fueled the economic crisis, most Americans acted responsibly in “an economic system that has, for the past quarter century, increasingly denied them the fruits of their hard work while shoveling the vast wealth they have created into the hands of a self-selected few.”

As the unemployment rate continues to rise and prospects for job growth remain dim, a September survey Tracking the Recovery: Voters’ Views on the Recession, Jobs, and the Deficit by the Economic Policy Institute offers new insight into how the recession has been felt by Americans.

Below are some striking numbers taken from the survey:

• 57 percent of Americans are close to someone who has been laid off.
• 61 percent of Americans report that someone close to them has had their hours or pay cut.
• 44 percent of all households have experienced one or the other during the past year.
• Over 8 out of 10 voters believe the country is still in an economic recession.
• 83 percent of Americans see unemployment as a big problem today and one not likely to end soon.
• 63 percent of Americans rate the failure of wages and salaries to keep up with the cost of living as a very big or fairly big problem.
• 62 percent of Americans say “large banks” have have benefited either a lot of a fair amount by the government’s stimulus efforts.
• 54 percent of Americans say “Wall Street investment companies” have benefited either a lot or a fair amount from the government’s stimulus efforts.
• About 1 out of 10 Americans believe that “the average working person” or “you and your family” have benefited either a lot or a fair amount from the government’s stimulus efforts.
• 81 percent of Americans say that the Obama administration still needs to do more to deal with unemployment and the loss of jobs.
• 87 percent of Americans say they support passing a major new job creation tax credit for businesses that create jobs in the U.S. in the next two years.
• 81 percent of Americans support extending unemployment insurance benefits for those who have lost their jobs during the recession and are unable to find new jobs.
• 71 percent of Americans support putting unemployed people back to work at government-funded public service jobs that help meet important community needs.
• 63 percent of Americans favor giving a new round of tax rebates to lower- and middle-income Americans.
• 52 percent of Americans support providing increased federal assistance to state and local governments to prevent additional layoffs of government employees because government layoffs add to unemployment and harm vital services.

A 2009 report by Trinity College researchers based on the American Religious Identification Survey 2008 profiles the “no religion population” and finds that they are no longer a fringe group. The no religion segment of the U.S. population, or “Nones,” far exceed the combined total of all the non-Christian religious groups in the U.S. and is likely to increase as non-religious young people replace older religious people. This report aims to profile the Nones and try to predict their likely impact on where society is headed.

Among the report’s more interesting highlights were:

• 1 in 6 Americans is presently of No Religion in terms of Belonging (self-identification).
• 1 in 4 Americans is presently of No Religion in terms of Belief and Behavior.
• 15 percent of the total adult U.S. population self-identify as Nones or 34 million adults.
• 22 percent of Americans aged 18-29 years self-identify as Nones.
• 660,000 the annual increase of adult Americans joining the ranks of Nones since 2001. The number has halved from 1.3 million annually in the 1990s.
• 59 percent of Nones identify as agnostics and deists rather than atheists or theists.
• 61 percent of Nones believe in human evolution while 38 percent of the general American public believes in human evolution.
• 60:40 the gender ratio among male and female Nones (19 percent of American men are Nones while 12 percent of American women are Nones).
• 32 percent of current Nones report they were None by age 12, making most Nones first generation.
• 21 percent of the nation’s Independents are Nones.
• 16 percent of the nation’s Democrats are Nones.
• 8 percent of the nation’s Republicans are Nones.

Related PBC Title

A study this month by the journal Reproductive Health finds that religious conservatism correlates significantly with teenage pregnancy.

The study found that:

“[C]onservative religious beliefs strongly predict U.S. teen birth rates, in a relationship that does not appear to be the result of confounding by income or abortion rates. One possible explanation for this relationship is that teens in more religious communities may be less likely to use contraception.”

These results are not surprising. Several federally-funded sex education programs in the U.S., which have been mandated to be abstinence-only and exclude teaching contraceptive techniques, reach millions of children and adolescents each year, despite the fact that such programs have proven time and again to be unsuccessful. As Jessica Valenti points out in her book The Purity Myth, abstinence-only education creates unrealistic expectations, routinely promotes false or misleading information about sex, and discourages the use of contraception, the consequences of which ultimately end up hurting young women.

The new findings mirror past ones, including those of a 2004 poll by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a 2006 survey published in the journal Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The latter found that while the overall majority of people support programs that teach both abstinence and other contraceptive techniques, support for abstinence-only education is largely due to evangelical or highly religious Christians. Below are some striking numbers from these two earlier studies.

• 81 percent of evangelical or born-again Christians believe it is morally wrong for unmarried adults to engage in sexual intercourse.
• 33 percent of non-evangelicals believe it is morally wrong for unmarried adults to engage in sexual intercourse.
• 49 percent of evangelicals or born-again Christians believe the government should fund abstinence-only programs instead of using the money for more comprehensive sex education.
• 21 percent of non-evangelicals believe the government should fund abstinence-only programs instead of using the money for more comprehensive sex education.
• 82 percent of all respondents indicate support for programs that teach students about both abstinence and other methods of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
• 60.3 percent of respondents who attend religious services more than once a week indicate support for programs that teach students about both abstinence and other methods of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
• 68.5 percent of all respondents support teaching students how to properly use condoms.
• 37.9 percent of respondents who attend religious services more than once a week support condom instruction.

Related PBC Title

When President Obama addressed the annual meeting of the American Medical Association earlier this summer, he urged physicians to support healthcare reform and bring medical costs under control, saying, “I need your help, doctors, because to most Americans, you are the health care system.”

While the debate over reform has been escalating among the public and politicians alike, where do America’s physicians come down in the healthcare debate?

A recent national survey of physicians by the New England Journal of Medicine offers insight into how doctors see their participation in the formation of healthcare policy.

• 78: Percentage of respondents who agreed that physicians have a professional obligation to address societal health policy issues.
• 73: Percentage of respondents who agreed that every physician is professionally obligated to care for the uninsured or underinsured.
• 67: Percentage of respondents who were willing to accept limits on reimbursement for expensive drugs and procedures for the sake of expanding access to basic healthcare.
• 54: Percentage of respondents who had a moderate or strong moral objection to using cost-effectiveness data to determine which treatments will be offered to patients.
• 45: Percentage of respondents who had no moral objection to using cost-effectiveness data to determine which treatments will be offered to patients.
• 28: Percentage of physicians who consider themselves conservative, who were consistently less enthusiastic about professional responsibilities pertaining to healthcare reform.

In addition, a national survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the majority of doctors support coverage expansion with a public competitor to the private insurance industry.

• 62.9: Percentage of physicians nationwide who support proposals to expand healthcare coverage that include both public and private insurance options, in which people under the age of 65 would have the choice of enrolling in a new public health insurance plan or in private plans. (public/private option competition)
• 27.3: Percentage of physicians who support a new program that does not include a public option and instead provides subsidies for low-income people to purchase private insurance. (private option only)
• 9.6: Percentage of physicians nationwide who support a system where a Medicare-like public program is created in lieu of any private insurance. (single-payer system)

Related PBC Title

The U.S. Census Bureau released its annual report of living standards late last week, providing a snapshot of the impact of the recession on the average American family. The report, based on data for the year from December 2007, paints a bleak picture of increased poverty, diminished earnings, and more people without health insurance.
(It’s worth noting that even greater numbers of people would be without insurance were it not for the fact that many who lost their coverage became eligible for Medicaid, which is essentially a “public option” for the poor.)

Related PBC Title

According to reports by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the figures for 2009 and 2010 will be substantially worse for the average American family, as economic forecasters expect unemployment will continue to rise. However the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ research indicates that the stimulus has had a significant effect in mitigating the impact.

Here are some striking numbers from the Census report.

3.6: Percentage by which the median household income declined between 2007 and 2008.

$50,303 : Real median household income in 2008, down from $52,163 in 2007. The decline in income coincides with the recession that started in December 2007.

13.2: Percentage of Americans living in poverty, the highest poverty rate since 1997, up from 12.5 percent in 2007

39.8: Million people in poverty, up from 37.3 million in 2007.

5.7: Percentage of Americans or 17.1 million Americans live in “deep poverty” with incomes below one-half of the poverty line.

19: Percentage of the child poverty rate for children under 18 years old (14.1 million) up from 18 percent (13.3 million) in 2007.

46.3 million: Number of Americans without health insurance, up from 45.7 million in 2007.

176.3 million: Number of Americans covered by employment-based health insurance, a decrease from 177.4 million in 2007 (58.5 percent in 2008 down from 59.3 in 2007)

87.4 million: Number of people covered by government health insurance, up from 83.0 million in 2007 (29.0 percent in 2008 up from 27.8 percent in 2007)

14.1: Percentage of people with Medicaid coverage, up from 13.2 percent in 2007 (42.6 million from 39.6 million in 2007)

14.3: Percentage of people with Medicare coverage, up from 13.8 percent in 2007 (43.0 million from 41.4 million in 2007).

15.4: Overall percentage of people without health insurance, up from 15.3 in 2007.

[Posted by Paul Gleason]

In 1953 the legendary journalist I.F. Stone was one of the first people to recognize just how dangerous the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, would be. McCarthy had set himself up as a watchman, always on the lookout for Communist subversion. In “Quis Custodiet Custodem?,” Stone asks (following the Roman satirist Juvenal) who will watch the watchmen?

Stone devoted issue after issue of his long-lived political pamphlet, I.F. Stone’s Weekly (selections of which are available in The Best of I.F. Stone), to watching our elected officials. He took a good look at McCarthy’s finances, and this is a taste of what he found:

• $10,000: payment for writing a single pamphlet for the housing company Lustron
• $20,000: a note from the Pepsi-Cola company at a time when McCarthy was chairman of a Senate subcommittee on sugar
• $20,000: amount McCarthy put in a special account for fighting communism; “However,” the report says, “no connection could be established between many of the disbursements from this account and any possible anti-Communist campaign.”
• $10,000: amount McCarthy put into a similar account; removed three weeks later as a loan to a friend speculating in soybeans
• $172,00: deposited in McCarthy’s Washington bank account between 1948 and 1952
• $96,000: amount Ray Kiermas, McCarthy’s administrative assistant, deposited in the account during this same period
• $60,000 and $45,000: amount deposited by McCarthy and Kiermas, respectively, that had “not been identified as to source.”