Victim of Love

[The Blue Book acknowledges that you hate staring at statistics even more than you hate snow-shoeing through my long-winded blogs.

I never start off attacking the keyboard with a firm topic in mind, and this morning what I thought was gonna be a quick post against drugs turned onto a longer road, with a different direction, to get where we're going.

Sorry folks, I'm trying to do my best here ... and hoping all the numbers will steer this post back to the point. But it's gonna be tomorrow.

Keeping your attention is what matters, I know that ... so skim past all the numbers and percentages if you want to ... the figures are only included to prove the situation is real and accurately described.]
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Americans are proud of having lots of stuff. Having lots of stuff is consistent with bragging that We're Number One.

But the USA hasn't enjoyed the world's highest standard of living for more than 25 years, and no one seems to have either noticed, or cared very much.

Our current Standard of Living is ranked #10 ... behind Norway, Iceland, Australia, Luxembuorg, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland and Belgium. Surprised?

Really?

Even considering our gross domestic product at purchasing power parity per capita, the USA ranks no higher than #3. At $41,399 we're wedged in between Norway and Ireland ... with Luxembourg leading the world at $69,800.

With an average life expectancy of 77.85 years, the USA ranks #48 ... behind Singapore, Guam, Hong Kong, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jordan, and Saint Helena (and only slightly ahead of Cyprus, Albania, Taiwan and Cuba).

We don't score very high when it comes to literacy, either.

14% of us- that's 40 million Americans- "can barely read a job offer or utility bill, which arguably makes them functionally illiterate" ... only a .4% improvement over the literacy rate among men in Tanzania.

If it's any consolation, the USA is Number 1 when it comes to owning television sets ... with 754 TVs per 1000 Americans.

We also have more cars per capita than any country on earth.

And if we spend $4 billion annually on french fries, $3 billion on potato chips, and almost $3 billion on coffee in 2003 ... that's nothing compared to the $10-$14 billion we spend on pornography ($4 billion on video porn alone) or the $40 billion we spend on diet books and programs.

Or the estimated $500 billion we spent gambling (including $31.5 billion in state lottery games).

We might even start feeling good about spending only $1.4 billion on computer video games, until we realize the average American spends 7.5 hours per week playing video games ... but some studies suggest only about 20% of Americans attend church regularly and of those only 3% tithe.

Americans spent $21.3 billion in 2002 on their pets – almost twice the amount given to missions worldwide. But we spent $224 billion eating out, $67 billion for frozen dinners, $15 billion on junk food snacks, $25 billion on gardening, $22.1 billion on hunting, and $191 billion on personal water craft.

Less than 2 percent of those who tithed gave offerings to special projects like missions.

And how did US churches spend the estimated $12.3 trillion they collected in 2000?

$213 billion was given to radio, TV, book publication, and counseling.

"Of the $11.4 billion given to missions, only 5.4 percent went to foreign missions. And 87 percent of that amount was for work among people who were already Christians. That left only 13 percent of foreign missions contributions to evangelize the entire non-Christian world." -Morality and Economics

Feel free to help me with the math here, but according to my arithmetic that means less than .024% of all money collected by US churches is going to spread the Gospel to non-Christians in foreign countries.

So much for US adults. But what about American teens?

The USA is #1 when it comes to teen pregnancy rates among developed countries, with 48.8 births per 1,000 women aged 15–19 in 2000. If we include pregnancies terminated by abortion, then the total rate is 83.6 pregnancies per 1,000 girls.

That's almost 8.4% of all US teenaged girls. Compare that figure to sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest incidence of teen pregnancy in the world ... at 14.3%.

Looks to me like we're more than halfway to being #1 globally in that department.

7 in 10 US women who had sex before age 14, and 6 in 10 of those who had sex before age 15, report having had sex involuntarily. According to the Justice Department, one in two rape victims is under age 18; one in six is under age 12.

In 1995, 32,130 males age 12 and older were victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. [National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.]

1 in 4 sexually active teens become infected with an STD every year. (Facts in Brief: Teen Sex and Pregnancy, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York, 1996).

More than 40% of teens who admitted drinking said they drink when they are upset; 31% said they drink alone; 25% said they drink when they are bored; and 25% said they drink to "get high." (U.S. Surgeon General, 1991)

On a typical college campus during a typical year, per capita students spending for alcohol--$446 per student--far exceeds the per capita budget of the college library. (Eigen, 1991 in the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse).

Percentage of children ages 5-17 who have a TV in their bedroom: 52 (BJK&E Media report, The New York Times, December 30, 1997. )

Hours per day that TV is on in an average US home: 7 hours, 12 minutes (BJK&E Media report, The New York Times, December 30, 1997).

The average child between 2 and 11 years old watches 27 hours of TV per week.

Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 38.5 (American Family Research Council, "Parents Fight ‘Time Famine' as Economic Pressures Increase," 1990.)

Parents spend 40 percent less time with their children than the parents of the previous generation, according to a national polling group. On average, Americans spend 6 hours a week shopping and only 40 minutes a week playing with their children.

Are we really #1 when we see what matters to Americans most?