Statistics on College Student Suicides and 2007 Suicide Stats

Suicide. Fortunately, what prompted me to write this post is not a family suicide, nor the fact that I haven't written on this blog in a couple years, but rather my daughter's venting about her suicide training during Resident Assistant training at college. (We were laughing at instances of being trained to do the obvious. For instance, call 911 if you see someone unconscious on the floor. Really? And I thought they were supposed to hide the body under the bed.)

Suicide training started with the 2004 Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act which is again facing Congress. This is the government's attempt to to support and enhance suicide prevention efforts in colleges and universities. We all know how the government works. Hence, the increase in suicides. Northwest Missouri University has an older paper addressing suicide training, and it's worth reading if you're delving into suicide research.

Regardless of our jokes about suicide training and training programs in general, my daughter and I have both known people who have tried to kill themselves, and we've known people who have committed suicide. I was going to do a post on suicide statistics - way too much information. Thought I'd narrow down the topic to suicide statistics in the US and then do another post about international statistics. Way too much information. Seeing as I had one son graduate from college this year, another daughter start college this year, and my daughter who was suicidal about her suicide training is a junior this year, it's appropriate to narrow it down to suicide and college kids, or teens, or whatever this evolves into.

If you need quick International Statistics, the 2011 US Census Report has 2006 suicide statistics on this pdf file - Korea and Hungary have the highest rates (much higher for men in both countries), and Greece has the lowest. In the US, more women commit suicide than men, and statistically speaking the US is somewhere in the middle. (Technical huh?) There's a multitude of more indepth statistics out there - you can use the search engine on my blog to search World Health Organization and all those great places. Everyone else can continue reading.

Back to the US. The (one of many) Official 2007 Statistics on Mortality is on the National Vital Statistics Report of 2007, Volume 58, Number 19. If you're looking for any statistics on death, this report is a good place to look. Suicide is listed as the 11th most common cause of death. (Technically, it's "intentional self-harm" - although I've read that intentional self-harm without death is technically not considered a suicide attempt. Wonder if the Emo generation changed that.)

Here's an interesting statistic - according to the above report, there are more suicides then there are murders. Homicide comes in at number 15. That does surprise me. When you bring race into the death rates, it turns out that blacks are far more likely to die from homicide, but whites are far more likely than blacks to die from suicide (If you're white, your chance of dying from suicide is twice as high as it would be if you were black.)

So what about guns? Here's what the report says:

Firearm suicide at 55.6 percent and homicide at 40.5 percent were the two major component causes of all firearm injury deaths in 2007.

Do you think it would be harder to pull the trigger on your own brain or someone else's?

Another fact to consider: suicide rates went up (3.7%), but deaths due to heart disease and cancer went down. Total deaths in the US were lower in 2007 then they were in 2006. All those statistics are in that Vital Statistics report above.

From the report:

The death rate for suicide has decreased slightly from a high of 13.7 deaths per 100,000 standard population in 1977 to a low of 10.4 in 2000.

Since 2000, the age adjusted death rate for suicide has increased by 8.7 percent [emphasis added].

Well that's not good. Gee, in 1999 the Surgeon General said there was a problem. In 2000 it was at it's lowest, but rose every year thereafter. In 2004 the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act was first passed. The suicide rate keeps rising. In fact, the suicide rate was the highest during the years that the government started getting involved in training. Funny how it was going down before the government got involved.

There is an interesting article from BioMed Central that questions the correlation and classifications of suicide and accidental poisoning. Their conclusion?

The official decline in the suicide rate between 1987 and 2000 may have been a partial artifact of misclassification of non-elderly suicides within unintentional poisoning mortality. We recommend in-depth national, regional, and local population-based research investigations of the poisoning-suicide nexus, and endorse calls for widening the scope of the definition of suicide and evaluation of its risk factors.

The above referred to paper includes interesting charts and trends, and it was just published in late 2010. Definitely worth reading if you're interested in statistics on suicide trends.

Personally I'd be looking up statistics on the increase in homework and suicide rates. (Okay, I admit it's not as simple as that - luckily.) But negative moods do create suicide tendencies. And it would be stating the obvious if I said happy people are less likely to commit suicide. Unfortunately, our genetics and serotonin levels and a multitude of other factors scientists are just learning about influence our lives and minds. Moods come in swings. (Ask any teenager or pregnant woman and they'll confirm that for you.) And apparently so do happiness levels in cities. The government's Healthfinder found that the states and nations that had the higher happiness levels, also had the higher suicide rates. The USA Today has an easy-reading list of state suicide rates from lowest to highest. Highest rate? Alaska. Lowest? Washington D.C.

If you like trends, the U.S. Vital Statistics has suicide trends from 1985 to 2004 depicted in several graphs in their Trends in Rates and Methods in Suicide. However they make the argument that due to interpretations of statistics, suicide rates have actually been declining up to 2004. One interesting fact they point out for 20-24 year olds (college students), is that firearms deaths have been decreasing, whereas suffocation has been increasing. If you start reading the 2007 report and these trend charts, you might come up with conflicting information. Have fun with that.

If you want to look at earlier statistics on suicides, this CDC sheet is from 2007 and lists suicide trends for Youths and Young Adults Aged 10-24 from 1990 to 2004. This report also addresses the change firearm related suicides and hanging/suffocation suicides. It's rather shocking how much hanging increased! From their suicide trend report:

In 2004, hanging/suffocation was the most common method among females in all three age groups, accounting for 71.4% of suicides in the group aged 10--14 years, 49% in the group aged 15--19 years, and 34.2% in the group aged 20--24 years.

In addition, from 2003 to 2004, hanging/suffocation suicide rates among females aged 10--14 and 15--19 years increased by 119.4% (from 0.31 to 0.68 per 100,000 persons) and 43.5% (from 1.24 to 1.78), respectively [emphasis added].

The report also mentions that a choking game was popular at the time.

Eerie to think about all these young people hanging themselves. But not unbelievable. My girls went to school with a couple kids that hung themselves during high school (not from playing a choking game). They also had a close friend who came home to find their dad hanging, still alive, in the garage from a botched suicide attempt. I have a neighbor who had a daughter who hung herself in her bedroom closet. These statistics aren't imaginary. And they are most likely under-reported. (The whole topic of under-reported suicide statistics could fill volumes of books - or should I say millions of Google pages.)

Much of the information reported in US Vital Statistics (and elsewhere on the web) is derived from reports by the Inventory of National Injury Data Systems. You'll find information on types of suicides, mortality, health, car accidents and anything related to health and injury somewhere in their links. They work with the Center for Disease Control and vice-versa on WISQARS, the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, definitely worth visiting.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has a suicide statistics fact sheet. And another page they have on suicide statistics is a chart showing breakdown by age. I tried posting the chart, but it's not aligning. It's easy enough for you to click the link to the chart or copy and paste the chart off that link if you need it. Interesting fact: teens and college student suicides are declining, but 30+ are increasing. So maybe there is something to the government training...

Nah.

If you can't gather enough statistics about suicides and college students from the above links and from in this blog's statistic search engine, you can extract some statistics from these links:

Harvard Crimson 2009 article talks about college students and contemplating suicide.

MIT Year 2000 college suicide and national tends.

Some Harvard Stats on guns, homicide and suicide.

I'm linking you to an outdated page at the National Alliance of Mental Health (NAMI) but there's organizations listed on the bottom that could be useful as well. And of course the National Institute of Mental Health will have zillions of statistics.

The Children's Trend Data Bank is a new website to me, and they have a post on teens, homicides, suicides and guns.

And here's an article on college students exhibiting more mental illness.

And of course, search results from the search engine on my blog has a lot more links on suicide statistics about young adults, so you can start contemplating all the contrary missing information that is out there about suicide and suicide data.

At another CDC Prevention Fact Sheet, we find the sobering statistic that:

Among young adults ages 15 to 24 years old, there are approximately 100-200 attempts for every completed suicide.

Although that's sad, we can look at it as every 100 to 200 young adults get another chance at life. Next time depression hits, perhaps they'll take their chance at life, instead of taking their life. I think it's our job to show them there is value in life.

International Paradox of Low Mesothelioma Rates in America

Though I wasn't planning on doing another post on asbestos statistics, a writer named Taylor Dardan asked me to do a guest post on mesothelioma. Taylor made the interesting correlation in the essay between America's success in keeping mesothelioma cancer rates down by regulating asbestos, and the domino effect of lowering public recognition of this asbestos-related disease. If America's awareness is lowered, it follows that international awareness of the correlation between asbestos and health will suffer as well. Canada is considering reopening a mine over one of the world's largest known asbestos deposits. Canada exports to India - where mesothelioma cancer rates are inordinately high. We live in a global world, and as Americans, we can make our fellow citizens and international friends aware that asbestos is deadly.


Alarming Statistics on Asbestos Exposure
by Taylor Darden

In America, people are used to seeing eye-popping statistics on the number of cancer diagnoses for the more "popular" cancers. For example, most people are at least vaguely aware that about one in eight women (12%) will develop invasive breast cancer. They may be aware that over one-hundred and fifty thousand people died of lung cancer in 2007 (the most recent year the numbers were available). Or, that more people died of lung cancer in America than any other cancer. However the statistics on supposedly rare cancers like mesothelioma have far less recognition by the general public.

Partially, this is because American statistics on mesothelioma are not considerably shocking. Only about three thousand cases are diagnosed each year. The majority of those cases occur in people between the ages of fifty and seventy, and nearly a third occur in veterans. Because it is rare, it is often overlooked or ignored. In terms of statistical awareness, mesothelioma is a forgotten cancer.

However, the statistics on worldwide mesothelioma cancer rates paints a strikingly different picture. The number of mesothelioma diagnoses sky rockets to over one-hundred thousand a year. As most of these cases are diagnosed in third-world countries, it’s likely the figures are highly understated. Combined with the extremely low mesothelioma survival rate (most patients survive only twelve to fourteen months after their initial diagnosis), it’s clear that mesothelioma deserves far more attention than it currently receives.

But even these statistics understate the truly alarming statistics about mesothelioma. The fact is, mesothelioma could be far lower. Mesothelimoa is a result of asbestos exposure. In fact, the rate of mesothelioma diagnosis in America is so low because asbestos use is heavily regulated, as it is throughout most developed countries. However, even developed countries such as Canada continue to export thousands of tons of asbestos - despite knowing the deadly consequences.

Canada exports nearly two-hundred thousand tons of asbestos a year to third-world countries such as India, where health and safety regulations are lax, and a staggering portion of the mesothelioma diagnoses are made each year. Even worse, Canadians plan on reopening the Jeffrey Mine, which sits atop the world’s largest deposit of asbestos, and has already produced over one-hundred and fifty thousand tons of asbestos since 2006 by itself. The Canadian government is currently debating propping up the Jeffrey Mine, which sits atop the world’s largest asbestos deposit, with a $58 million dollar loan that should allow it to export over two-hundred tons of asbestos each day at the request of the mine’s owner G. Bernard Coulombe.

Coulombe’s strategy is to reinvent the small Quebec town Asbestos, named after the mineral during its boom days in the mid 20th century, where the Jeffrey Mine is located by reopening the mine and selling the deadly material to India, Pakistan, and Vietnam. Quebec, which is part of the mineral’s part of its mining history still advocated its use and insists, against the words of the WHO and all international experts, that asbestos is safe. Despite this, asbestos use is heavily regulated in Quebec, as well as the rest of Canada.

The wide gap in the statistics between mesothelioma occurrences in America and worldwide demonstrate our ability to effectively prevent the cancer- but it requires far more attention and awareness than it is currently receiving. Ironically the mundane quality of the statistics in America may to be blame for this, even as they provide a textbook case for why the worldwide numbers are so alarming.

Car Accident Statistics, Fatalities, Women Drivers and a Few Drunks

Car accident statistics seemed like a good topic to post since my two teens are in the midst of getting their driver's licenses and their first (very used) cars. On top of that, my latest writing assignment was coincidentally on car insurance - just as I was panicking over how high my car insurance rates will rise once they're both on my policy. Fortunately, I have stayed alive to write this post even through their first bout of city driving.

Just to warn everyone - there's going to be a couple more women drivers on the road. Statistically speaking, despite slanderous jargon about women drivers (mostly from my father), people should be grateful that these two new drivers are women and not men. Even recent 2007 fatality statistics by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety shows that men are the drivers in the high majority of fatal accidents. The Institute's 2007 Fact Sheet has charts demonstrating fatal accident and gender statistics from 1975 to 2007.

Of course, the Center for Disease Control's Teen Driver Fact Sheet's mention of car accidents being the number one reason for teenage deaths in the US doesn't help me sleep well at night when my teens are out with their friends. But within these teenage statistics from the CDC is the data that teen female drivers between the ages of 16 and 19 are far less likely to die than their male friends. The CDC looks like they also have some interactive statistics and mapping toys that can be used to investigate car accident statistics.

Personally, if I were to compare my older boys with my two teen girls and their driving style, I have one in each gender that is very cautious and rule abiding, and I also have on in each gender that is over-confident about their driving abilities. Over-confidence can be a killer, but it is probably not as deadly as alcohol. (However, that's debatable. We haven't mastered measuring car accidents due to over-confidence yet.)

Men are responsible for the majority of alcohol realted deaths. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in their gender report states the difference:

From 1982 to 2007, the proportion of fatally injured passenger vehicle drivers with blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) at or above 0.08 percent declined by 29 percent among males and 37 percent among females. Since 1985 the percentage of fatally injured male drivers with high BACs has been about twice that of female drivers.

Under the quote in that report is data from the 1980s to 2007 that lists statistics on alcohol related car accidents and BAC levels. The good news is that alcohol related fatal deaths are decreasing. And so are car accidents. CNN has a news article summarizing some alcohol related car accident statistics.

In the US, car accidents reached their all-time low since the rumbling days of hot rods and drag racing in the 1960s and the peak of the 1970s according to 2008 statistics (reported in June 2009) from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in their 2008 statistics summary of traffic safety facts. If you need to go global, you'll find some links on the US Department of State Travel page that has links to transportation and traffic statistics. (More global websites for international car accident statistics are listed later on in this blog post.)

Here is a link to the cache version of the NHTSA report that appears in Google Doc form:

Google Doc version of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA)2008 Traffic Safety Facts.

Here is a link to the pdf version of the NHTSA report:

PDF version of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA)2008 Traffic Safety Facts.

Overall, the number of people injured in car accidents in the US dropped from the 2.49 million in 2007 to "only" 2.35 million in 2008. The 2008 NHTSA car accident statistic report has a lot of valuable statistics and data and is likely one of the more recent sources for car accident statistics. You can also take a look at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics website for traffic data to support car accident data research. You'll also find some car accident statistics hiding in railroad, airline and boat accident statistics. (I have more research links on plane crashes and holiday travel statistics under the "transportation" labeled blog posts if you need more information in those areas.)

Another popular source for car accident statistics is the FARS - Fatality Analysis Report System. They have comparative statistics of car accidents and motorcycle accidents in a nicely laid out table that runs from 1994 to 2007. Ratios, mileage and population comparisons are listed as well as car accident statistics involving pedestrians and bicylists. FARS also has links to 2007 car accident statistics by state, (no surprise that California has the most and Rhode Island has the least) which list fatal accident statistics, as well as car accident statistics that involve a collision with an object. Their car accident reports by state also includes a page of alcohol related car accident statistics and BAC level statistics by state.

The FARR website also has links to trends and other reports, data and statistics on vehicle accidents. They even have a link to an excellent query page that offers tabulation reports on all sorts of data like vehicle types, times, license status, driver height, and all kinds of goodies. Great stuff if you need to get down and dirty and put your stats into a spreadsheet or need some good data to prove or refute a point. Ooooo time to play...wow that's great - after doing a query you get to go to see the full information of each report filed if you want. Code 11 in sequence of events is hitting an animal. I was just looking at deer statistics, however I know that there are always people hitting deer around here and getting their cars dented, but accident reports are hardly ever made.

Since I have no need for the data now I better stop playing. Let's move on to global and international car accident statistics. What better place to start than the World Health Organization. WHO knows everything about what's going on in the world, because in one way or another, everything will probably affect a person's health. They even have a page on world car accident information. A 2004 page describes motor vehicle accidents as a "hidden epidemic" with statistics backing up the claim. WHO has a lot of pdf reports on road injuries and road safety around the world.

There is a "Causes of Death" Excel file on the World Health Organizations Data and Statistics page that gives you a great spreadsheet of deaths by countries, and it includes data on deaths due to "road traffic accidents" by country. On the Pan American page of unintentional accidents on the WHO website you can find a link to a world traffic injury and prevention report that contains road traffic and vehicle accident research and statistics. You can also take a look at a WHO European page that shows some car accident statistics that closely mirrors the US and a list of links to European road traffic safety, injury and transport reports. You can also find some nice graphs and charts in the 2007 European Road Safety Day car accident and traffic safety report.

The BAST (Federal Highway Research Institute in Germany) has pdfs and links to car accident statistics in Germany.

A google book result brings up the WHO's World Report on Road Traffic which contains a lot of statistics and information, although I'm not sure how the information on the website differs from the information in the book, but it might be quicker just to look at the google book result to get a quick overview of international car accident statistics.

Wikipedia has links to resources for car accident statistics on their entry for Traffic Collision and Road Traffic Safety. From there you'll also see a Wikipedia link to information on the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, Road Casulaties Great Britain, a list of car accidents (motor vehicle accidents) in Japan and car accidents in Thailand.

UK car accident statistics can be found on the Department of Transport (DfT) website page containing transportation and traffic statistics and statistics on UK accidents. They also have a report on forecasting older driver accidents.

If those aren't enough, you can find more UK car accident statistics at the UK's Office of National Statistics (ONS) website and their page on UK road traffic accident statistics. The British Medical Journal has a free text study which includes statistics comparing car accident police reports and hospital records. (I love the BMJ and use it a lot. I wish all journals would provide free full text!)

If you want to go a wee bit south in the Commonwealth and need some car accident statistics on New South Wales, Australia, head over to their Road and Traffic Authority website and look at their page on crash statistics for free download information on Australia car accident statistics.

Staying south, the South African Department of Transportation website has a link to car accident statistics and road safety information in South Africa covering 2001 to 2005,with some statistics from the 1990s thrown in. There's also graphs in the report comparing South Africa statistics to Australia, China and other countries. Other statistics on South Africa car accidents can be found at the "about us" page Road Safety in South Africa and the "Arrive Alive" website that published the "about us" post, including some 2009 accident stats from Africa's N4 Toll Route.

Science Daily, (one of my favorite websites), has a short article stating some car accident statistics in Africa while claiming that Africa has the highest death rate from car accidents compared to other countries. If you're interested in data collection methods used in collecting Africa car accident statistics, someone was kind enough to upload a report on the implementation and process of using a MAPP data collection method in Africa. (If you're interested in more links on statistics and data involving Africa in general, take a look at my blog posts tagged Africa.)

If you want to delve into some car accident statistics and road traffic statistics, check out the uploaded documents at thesearch results at Scribd for "road traffic accidents," and the graphs and charts posted on "car accidents" at Swivel, or even the "road traffic safety" search results from my blog (that now needs some serious updating).

Looking at these stats, I'm very grateful that my life has never been touched directly by a fatal car accident, although my teenagers always seem to know somebody who knows somebody who was in a near-fatal accident. I have known a few women from church who lost their teens in car accidents - an unbearable thought to me. My boyfriend, however, was touched directly by fatal accidents, and lost his brother and his son to two different motorcycle accidents (years apart) - one caused by a drunk driver in a car, and one caused by teenage over-confidence. No statistic in the world can represent that loss and pain of losing a family member, and especially a child.

It's good to see that car accidents are being lowered, and drunk driving is on a downhill slide. I hope the road safety advocates keep up the good work and are continuously successful at saving lives and keeping our young ones alive.

Foreclosure Statistics and Foreclosure Defense Links

Foreclosure news is getting tiring, but since I'm joining the ranks of people with their houses in foreclosure and I haven't written in a while, I thought I'd throw up a post on foreclosure statistics to help those who are looking to find the latest foreclosure statistics. Personally, I'm just sick of reading about and dealing with foreclosure news and information. On top of my own foreclosure, I've had a few assignments writing articles on foreclosure and bankruptcy. No pity for me though, I'm looking forward to moving, my house is falling apart, and the house is in my ex-husband's name whom I haven't seen in four years. It'll be a weather shock though - we're planning on moving from NY to the Tri-cities area in TN. I'll be positioned right in the middle of my kids in PA, VA and NC. I'm tired of fighting winter and I have a low-tolerance for the cold, so I'll appreciate the above-zero no-shoveling-or-getting-stuck-in-the-driveway winters.

If you're looking for NY courts, forms and regulations, try the New York State Unified Court System website, and their page with a couple new 2008 foreclosure regulations. You can also find lots of court forms needed for foreclosure proceedings at the NY Bar Association website. A NY Times May 2009 article stated foreclosures are happening now more than ever in NY, so I don't feel all alone. The article has some easy to refer to charts and statistics as well. CNN reported that California is suffering from the most foreclosures, and also brought to light that the children suffer as a result of unexpected and financially difficult moves. Even as a mother of six, I hadn't given thought to the great impact foreclosure has on young children. Perhaps because my kids are going off to college anyhow (4 down, 2 to go), and the remaining two and I are looking forward to moving. I do think the effects of foreclosure on children is a topic that definitely deserves more attention, and likely more study.

Statehealth.org has foreclosure ranks and percentage changes by state. Virginia University has a 2009 report ccomparing foreclosure and housing statistics between states and metro areas. The Center for Housing Policy, a partner of the National Housing Conference, has a comprehensive state and metro comparison, drop down search option for statistics by metro area on their "Paycheck to Paycheck" analysis, and a list of housing and foreclosure reports.

If you need Federal data and statistics on foreclosure, the Federal Reserve Board has foreclosure maps and foreclosure trends, as well as a dedicated area for foreclosure resources. Docuticker is a "ticker" website of updated government news, and has updates of the latest foreclosure news from government agencies. You can always review the latest foreclosure search results from the White House website, or US Treasury search results on foreclosure,. The FDIC has some random foreclosure statistics, and if you want to browse through some 2009 foreclosure statistics in pdf files you can take a look at the FDIC's foreclosure search results. If you're looking for information on the banking industry, the FDIC also has links to banking data and statistics (obviously). The FDIC has a quarterly report in pdf form that you can view for 2009 statistics.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) gets quoted a lot in the news, but they don't have a lot of free statistics on their website. However, the Research Institute of Housing America (RIHA) is a trust 501(c) under the Mortgage Bankers Association, and is a good source for mortgage and housing data. You can also find the latest foreclosure statistics in news articles from websites like Market Watch.

Having a blog post on foreclosure statistics would be incomplete without mentioning HUD. First of all, they have datasets from the oft-referred to yearly American Housing Survey. HUD also has a research link with some housing data and statistics, and an "online library" to pursue HUD related topics a little further.

If you've gone to Realty Trac, take a look at this recent article examining the accuracy of foreclosure statistics reported by Realty Trac. I just found the Foreclosure Industry website, and it looks like it's keeping up with current foreclosure statistics, and the "Loan Audit" blog that is keeping up with mortgage and housing news.

You'll also find more data and recent news on foreclosure from a search result at the search engine in my blog.

For anyone wanting some legal resources on affirmative defenses to foreclosure, or just general legal information on foreclosure, I found the "Foreclosure Defense Group" website helpful, and I believe I used information from the Patriot's War website (although it was on their old website, they have a lot of info on their new one). NOLO is a publisher of legal books and their website is to promote their products, but they have a lot of links to free information, and I've often found their website very helpful in the beginning stages of research. They also have a useful page dedicated to foreclosure information and proceedings. You can also take a look at Kenneth M DeLashmutt's very nice article which includes easy to understand steps and defenses as well as a few case citations and useful foreclosure links. The Preventing Foreclosure blog has useful information, foreclosure defenses, and forms. If you haven't paid a visit to Scribd, they have tons of documents that people have uploaded to search. Try the search results for foreclosure or foreclosure affirmative defenses. There's also the Foreclosure Defense Nationwide blog with case citations and quotes from court foreclosure filings.

Above all, if you know someone who has received a Summons and Complaint for a foreclosure, make sure they serve their legal Answer within 20 days, even if it's "pro se." It will stall the foreclosure for months, and they'll have time to either get an attorney, look into loan modification, arbitration and settlement opportunities, deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, short sales, bankruptcy, and other prevention strategies and foreclosure options, or even wait for upcoming help for homeowners. There's a lot out there, and if you serve an Answer in time, you'll have time to review those options. Shoot me an email at getanswerserved at gmail dot com if you need some help typing up an answer to serve "pro se" and can't afford an attorney.

Well, I'm still sick of reading about foreclosure but they're not going away any time soon. I know there are thousands of other resources out there, unfortunately I wasn't able to pinpoint them all. I'll keep updating my blog's search engine so you can always check for more foreclosure statistics.

It's time for me to pack up now (pathetic pun intended)...happy statistics hunting or happy house hunting!

P.S. How could I forget my dear friend Swivel? Don't forget to check out foreclosure statistics, graphs and charts created by the Swivel community!

Eat, Sleep, and Read Statistics on International Social Progress

I'm back from my four week hiatus away from civilization. My satellite contract had to be renewed, and to make a long story short, I evaluated other Internet options, none of which were financially feasible, then the satellite dish had to be repositioned to find reception amongst towering trees. It took a few days on the phone (being transferred a zillion times) to a tech person in India (who didn't quite understand how tall the trees actually were) to get the job done. (I thought my addiction to coffee was bad...try not having information at your fingertips for a month!) Well now that I've vented...how about that 2009 OECD report?

Couldn't help but click on the Yahoo news feature comparing the eating and sleeping habits between US and France. Live Science had their take on the international OECD report as well, and included a chart with comparisons of sleeping habits between the 18 countries included in the report.

This not-talked-about-enough report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had a lot more information than just sleeping and eating habits. It stated some common knowledge, like the fact that men have more leisure time than women. (Women certainly don't need statistics to prove it!) But aside from eating, sleeping and leisure time, you'll find data on unemployment, poverty, social and health issues, inequality, demographics and work and life.

These sleeping, eating, and men-have-more-fun-than women statistics came from the OECD's "Society at a Glance 2009 - OECD Social Indicators" report. They have a link for the data and indicators included in this report, but they do indicate there is some privileged information for accredited journalists. (C'mon hackers - help us bloggers out!) I don't know why us lowly bloggers aren't good enough to accumulate a little extra knowledge ($$ comes to mind), but I have to admit there are a lot of nice free statistics in this progress report. They do come in the awkward form of .pdf and .xls files for separate chapters, but the data is useful nonetheless. The data and indicators included are divided into data groups as follows:

1. Headline Social Indicators

2. Measuring Leisure in OECD Countries

3. Interpreting OECD Social Indicators

4. General Context Indicators

Net national income per capita
Fertility rates
Migration
Marriage and divorce

5. Self-sufficiency Indicators

Employment
Unemployment
Childcare
Student performance
Not in employment, education or training
Age of labour force exit
Spending on education

6. Equity Indicators:

Income inequality
Poverty
Poverty among children
Adequacy of benefits of last resort
Public social spending
Total social spending

7. Health Indicators

Life expectancy
Perceived health status
Infant health
Obesity
Height
Mental health
Long-term care recipients
Health care expenditure

8. Social Cohesion Indicators

Life satisfaction
Work satisfaction
Crime victimisation
Suicides
Bullying
Risky behaviour

The OECD website has some great international statistics in other reports as well. Their 2008 annual report is a full free pdf download of 118 pages that covers the world economy and is full of quotable statistics. Elsewhere on the site, you'll find data and statistics on international employment, wages and benefits, and international social expenditures data for the past few years as well. I enjoyed reading this page on world educational statistics. There's also statistics available on their Source Data page, but I believe these are a combination of free statistics and priced statistic resources.

There is also a very nice page of links to other social policy websites that I'm sure are rich with useful (and free) international data and statistics. (If you're interested in more websites with international statistics, there's a lot of links to reputable international statistics in my post on International Relief and Humanitarian Aide statistics.)

This OECD website is great. Pay a visit and browse around if you're looking for international data and statistics. I have to make sure it's included in the statistics search engine I have on this blog, (which, by the way, I've updated recently), so I'm going to post this. Then I'll try and eat and sleep like the French, and steal some of that leisure time from men!

Post Script: While I was testing my search for OECD during my fight with Google Custom Engine (which has made changes not to my liking and my search engine is now likely not to my liking also), I saw that Mr. Warner posted some great links from their website a month ago! Mr. Warner has some OECD regional links and more information on the valuable data at OECD. Now I have to continue hitting my computer with an axe...

Statistic Resources on Children with Aids for World Aids Day

Statistics on Children with Aids are slowly surfacing as the Aids epidemic passes down through the generations. One of the primary locations for research on AIDS with recent statistics and information on Aids is at the United Nations Aids website, UNAIDS.ORG. This website has information on the latest research, statistics, graphs, tables, Excel formatted data, charts and international Aids information. There is a free pdf download of UNAIDS 2008 Global Report on Aids, with a link to a jpg wall chart demonstrating the prevalence of Aids by country on the same page.

UNICEF has produced one of the most notable reports on children with Aids. The Children and AIDS: Third Stocktaking Report, 2008 is a free pdf download available on the UNICEF and UNAIDS websites. UNICEF has a short article on the Children and Aids report which lists some highlights and findings on transmission of AIDS to children, awareness and prevention, and statistics on treatment.

International Aids statisticians and medical experts agree that early treatment of Aids in children significantly increases the chances of survival. The Children and Aids report lists a study on Antiretroviral Therapy which demonstrated that treatment of AIDS in the first 12 weeks of a child's life reduces mortality by around 76%.

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) reported on November 19, 2008 a landmark study that further confirmed early treatment can reverse a child's death sentence with AIDS. In this New England Journal reported study, it was discovered that infants with HIV who received Antiretroviral Therapy at an average age of seven weeks increased their chances of living, and the HIV infected infants were "four times less likely to die in the next 48 weeks" when compared to waiting until the symptoms of HIV surfaced.

The NIAID also has an informative page on HIV, Aids and Infants with a summary of treatment and statistics from 2004. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the US has a page with statistics and research on mother to child Aids transmission. Fortunately, it demonstrates that transmission has be reduced with increased treatment of Aids during pregnancy. They also have graphs on the state of HIV/Aids as defined by several categories, and a separate page on graphs with teenage Aids statistics. The National Institute of Health has a branch for Pediatric, Adolescent & Maternal AIDS.

Unfortunately, the majority of women do not get tested for Aids during pregnancy and statistics are showing that 25% of pregnant women who have Aids are unaware that they carry the disease. The Children and Aids report also indicated that children from an AIDS household were often not tested until they were two months old. Awareness and availability of AIDS therapies and medications will determine which child lives and which child dies.

US Aid reports that 90 percent of the 5.1 million people in India with HIV/AIDS don't know about their status until a crisis occur. A Times of India November 2008 article on Aids and Children lists some very grim statistics for children with Aids in India.

Paediatrician Sanjay Lalwani, head of the department of paediatrics, Bharati Hospital and Research Centre, says 10 to 15 per cent of children who get the infection from their mothers die within the first two years. Eighty to 85 per cent of them develop AIDS between the ages of five and seven and die.

The progression from HIV infection to AIDS can be prevented by treating these children with anti-HIV drugs (anti-retroviral therapy) when their immune system starts deteriorating. "The treatment may not be of much help if you start it at late stage of infection. At present, the government of India gives the drugs only to those children in the later stages of HIV infection," said Oswal.

The article lists AIDS statistics from the World Health Organization, and expresses the need for treatment with a listing of Aids Clinics and Aids care facilities that are available for children in India with Aids. The World Health Organization also has a page dedicated to information on children with Aids which has many pdf files, Aids treatment research, tables and graphs with statistics available in a free download.

Children with Aids have many faces. UNICEF has a Voices of Youth page. There is a YouthAids website that has Aids statistics on youth and Aids as well as general Aids statistics. The Global Ministries at The United Methodist Church has personal stories from HIV infected individuals and those suffering from AIDS. The Children with Aids Project seeks to find homes for children with AIDS and raise money for the orphans of Aids. National Public Radio has an audio broadcast from a 14 year old with Aids.

BBC reported in an article on 40 children contracting Aids in a hospital in Uzbekistan that "The United Nations says Central Asia has one of the world's fastest-growing HIV infection rates" and "Unsafe blood supplies and contaminated equipment are often blamed for spreading the infection." CNN did an indepth study on AIDS in the early 21st century, and there are many valuable historical facts on AIDS as well images, graphs and personal stories at their website. A 2006 BBC article examined how AIDS affects the workforce in Africa. This has a link to a BBC bar graph on Aids statistics around the world.

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) has a bar graph on the transmission methods of Aids to children under 13 in the US according to race. The chart is slightly outdated, as it is from 2004. Nationmaster is always good for statistics on just about anything, and they have an easy bar graph to follow which reports children living with AIDS by country.

The Stolen Childhood blog, which lists international issues and global statistics on many health, drug and crime issues that are tragic to the livelihood of children, has a post on Aids and Kenya from 2007. The UC Atlas of Global Inequality from the University of California has a link to charts, graphs and maps on children and Aids. However, be aware that the page on children and Aids has not been updated since 2006. The website however, is rich with information, statistics, whitepapers, information on conferences and links to rich resources of global statistics.

Swivel is great for finding graphs and charts, and if you need more statistics on Aids, a search for AIDS at Swivel will bring a couple pages of results about Aids statistics. Some statistics on Aids in the United States by State can be found at State Health Facts website, which offers links to many statistics on health topics, including demographics and health indicators.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has a Fact Sheet on Aids, The US Government also has an HIV/AIDS website at AIDS.GOV which has links to preventative literature and statistics on some US prevention efforts, location of HIV testing sites, and research on clinical studies. There is also a link to a list of funding agencies and programs for Aids, an Aids Youth Fact Sheet, and a nice list of Aids Agencies and Programs.

Statistics on Aids can be found on millions of websites. However, if you are doing research and are looking for accurate figures on Aids and Youth and Children, keep in mind that "youth" and "children" are often defined by different age groups. The age 15 has been included in children, youth and adult statistics on Aids.

Educating and providing early treatment to women and infants with Aids can drive the mortality statistics on children and Aids on a sharp down curve. Keeping our future generations free from Aids by providing education and early treatment of pregnant women and infants will put a stop to its generational growth. Who knows? One of the lives that are saved could be the life that finds a cure for Aids and ends the deadly disease for all future generations.

International Relief and International Humanitarian Aid Resources and Statistics

International Relief and International Humanitarian Aid Resources and Statistics

Statistics on world disasters, hunger, health, disease and crime are staggering.   Poverty is the toxic element that is infused into all humanitarian catastrophic misfortunes.   Poverty ignites and is ignited by natural and intentional human indecencies and nature's wrath. Governments of many nations continue to offer financial aid to relief efforts, but politics often put basic human needs such as food and shelter on the back burner, while strategized political gain continues to roast into a succulent greedy feast.   When economies fail, international relief serving those who are far worse off than the statured decision makers is discontinued.  Funding remains to be decided by the face of a dollar sign, rather than the face of a poverty-stricken child, a homeless family, or a disease-ridden village.  Fortunately, all faces of devastation are not dismissed nor forgotten.

The faces of  those struck with the toxic energies of Poverty live constantly  in the minds of  International Relief Workers and Humanitarian Aid Workers around the world that trudge on inspired, exhausted and determined. Where the governments fails, International Relief Workers, Humanitarian Aid Workers and Private Humanitarian Agencies embark on missions for individual and group fundraising to raise money for transportation, medical costs, housing, food, and shelter.  Their funding efforts send them far away to the isles of Affliction, Corruptness, and Desperation that suffer from the epidemics of Poverty.  

Where governments fail, people must not fail.  Those of us not capable of  administering medicines, building houses,  training and educating the uneducated,  traveling to remote areas, and caring for dying babies in their arms, need to support those that are.  A volunteer International Relief Worker or Humanitarian Aid Worker does not receive a pass for a free around-the world trip.  They must pay for their desire to help the devastated.  Even those who receive a small compensation from a private funding source must still fund their own traveling expenses.  

During times of economic crisis, private funding deteriorates, and individuals must raise money on their own to quiet the cries of the helpless that infiltrate their minds at night, while sleeping in the arms of an almost sinfully-wealthy country.  These cries drive them to ask their churches, communities, businesses and educational institutions to help.  It is up to us, the believers, the dreamers, the neighbors, the business owners, and the educators, to support these individuals so that they can be the link on the chain to give to others what we can't give.  Only a strong chain of efforts can drag the toxic-ridden isles of poverty into a decent humanitarian state.  We must all become a part of that chain.  

High school students should be introduced to humanitarian efforts.  Colleges, universities, and even vocational schools should invoke International Relief and Humanitarian Aid training.  International majors that focus on people as well as politics need to grow exponentially.   Educational institutions offering majors for International Relief are far and few between.  Our educational system must step in to promote the end of global poverty and give rise to the efforts to extinguish the events that contribute to poverty's ignition.  

My daughter's continuous desire to become an International Relief Worker throughout her high school years, and our trying search for information on education and careers in International Relief Work over the years, drove me to choose this topic for my blog post on Blog for Poverty Day.  We can do more than contribute money, we can contribute our time.  Train, educate, contribute and build a desire to help others among our young people.  Teach young people the value of life, the value of living and the value of giving.  As parents, educators and humans with a heart - we can all step in to build the chain to pull the toxic elements of poverty out of human existence.  The chain may go on forever, but with every link, poverty's toxic elements are smothered just a little bit more.  

Many websites are available to see first hand the staggering statistics.  And since collecting statistics is a difficult, and almost impossible endeavor in many remote areas, these statistics, as dramatic as they are, often under-represent the realities of humanitarian needs.

One of the most noted resources for data on Global Poverty Issues is the World Bank.  The World Bank Statistics Page has data on international statistics for poverty related issues, current and needed funding, trends on poverty related issues and trends on development programs.  There is also a search engine query page for indepth research and an online poverty computational calculator designated as Povcal Net which can be improvised by countries. The World Bank website is a very comprehensive and reputable source for information and statistics. The World Health Report is one of their most considerable publications. 

The World Food Programme website, the World Health Organization with numerous health statistics on international issues, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and
UNICEF, need little introduction and are primary sources for research and statistics on international statistics on poverty and global issues.  On a smaller scale is US Aid, an independent US government website with information on budget for foreign assistance programs funded by the United States and  US Overseas Loans and Grants.  There is also a page on Missions of US Aid.

Disaster areas are often recipients of international funding.  There are many websites available for research on disaster funding, histories, trends, costs, causes and effects.  The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction has detailed data on the impact of natural disasters for many countries throughout the years.  The Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder has a list of links to statistics on natural disasters, including many valuable government resources for information and statistics.  This is a must visit website for substantive research on natural disasters.  If you're looking for some global play-by-play disaster reports by month or year, check out the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center).  NASA is has astronomical amounts of information on disasters and shouldn't be left out of the list of resources.   The Asian Disaster Reduction Center has several pdf downloads on disaster statistics and analysis.

Talking ITGlobal Issues Page is not limited to IT issues, in fact, it is a non-profit website that promotes global issues to youth, and even  includes a page on educational games for global issues.  I haven't tried any of these yet but I'll definitely pay a visit later. Educational games on peace and global issues aren't easy to find!

I haven't compiled a list of universities and colleges that offer International and Humanitarian majors, (not merely courses), but it's on my list of things to do.  But there are some great websites for teenagers and young adults (and their parents and counselors of course!) to examine as they explore their career options.  Many of these also include links to listings to International Jobs, International Relief Jobs, and Humanitarian Aid Jobs around the world.  

The United Nations has a page dedicated to United Nations Volunteer ism, and a Fact Sheet on UN Volunteers and a Poverty Network Web Portal if you're interested in including your website.

The Human Rights Interactive Network has a long list of links from around the world on current news, newspapers, journals and websites related to human rights.  I just took a look at the All Africa website since my daughter is interested in International Relief work in Africa, and it's a wonderful news and research resource information on current events and even statistics. Unfortunately, its "premium search engine" is only available at a price.  However, it does provide many other sources for information. When I was doing research for my daughter I stumbled on the UN's Africa Renewal Online Magazine, formerly called "Africa Recovery." (The new name does sound more optimistic doesn't it?)  I really enjoyed reading it, and it's a wonderful source for current news and renewal efforts in Africa. UNICEF has a pdf file on Central Africa statistics and relief efforts. (1 in 5 die before their fifth birthday is particularly disheartening.)

 Blogspot blogs get in on the action in Africa too.  The Business Action for Africa blog is a blog to subscribe to if you're interested in humanitarian efforts in Africa, or have business connections willing to work for Africa, or are lucky enough to be in a position to recommend business action opportunities.  This is a professional business networking website with many valuable links and references.  There is also a social networking website for Businesses Fight Poverty around the world.

 This group is looking for volunteers to help deaf children in Africa if anyone is interested! The ad is posted in the website Network Learning, which has nothing to do with digital networks, but networking for humanitarian aid.  There are many free pdf files, career advice, and links for humanitarian aid career, learning, and organizational development and fundraising information. Network Learning is non-profit and has a vast array of information for NGO's.  But I still haven't figured out what NGO stands for. I'll have to look it up when I'm done. But if you know what it is - pay a visit to Network Learning.  

The website Aid Workers Network is another non-profit website for Humanitarian Aid Workers with career advice for Humanitarian Careers. I received a wonderful pdf file for my daughter from Dr. Bryan Walker, whose two sons are international humanitarian workers. The 83 page pdf file is entitled "Better Ways to Find Humanitarian Employment" and has too many valuable links and statistics to mention.  Dr. Walker has extensive experience in humanitarian aid. His free pdf book is a fluent read despite being chock full of valuable information, and can be downloaded at this link at the Network Learning Website.  If anyone can upload this document to encourage humanitarian workers, Dr. Bryan Walker can be contacted at this address on the Aidworkers Network.   I would also encourage high schools and guidance offices to promote this career advice to students interested in International Work.  As Dr. Walker stated in his email, "There are many people who struggle to get into humanitarian work so the more opportunities for readership, the better."  This pdf also includes a case history from his son now in the DR Congo with the International Rescue Committee.  I really enjoyed the read, but my daughter has to finish her research paper on the death penalty before she can get around to it.  Maybe her and I with gather up the youngest and head overseas after the rest of the clan are settled...

Career resources also exist at this US Aid page on Careers, and this free pdf on Private Volunteer Agencies and Opportunities for Humanitarian Aid and International Relief.   Relief Net is still my favorite resource after all of my investigations.  It includes interactive maps, professional resources,  International Relief Job and Humanitarian Aid Positions available, (including descriptions), data, statistics, and more.  This is positively one of the best networks to use if you begin a quest for information on international humanitarian relief work.  

I've been lucky my youngest is entranced with Magic School Bus, and I could go on forever with this post, but it's time to make dinner or lunch or whatever it is we're eating now.  (I like to avoid mirrors, calendars and clocks!) And, I think Blog for Poverty Day is almost over! Eeek...I've never been on time for anything.

Enjoy the day, enjoy your life, and build a little link to help end global poverty.

Plane Crash Statistics

Plane crash statistics isn't a very popular topic, but since I've collected some data and posted some of it in Wiki Answers, I might as well throw the links to statistics up here and in my search engine.

What possessed me to start digging for plane crash statistics? My 8 year old daughter has had this fear for the last three weeks that a plane will fall and crash into our house. Her prayers now include "Dear God, please don't let a plane fall on our house - and if it does can me and mom (and sisters, brothers, dogs, cats, guinea pigs) all go to heaven at the same time?" This is my daredevil daughter that has spent her walking years (she skipped crawling) climbing and jumping from anything and everything she could. (No broken legs yet - thank God.)

Personally, I could use a new roof. So if the plane crashes and we're not home and I can get a new roof out of the deal - all the better for me. I suggested that to her but it didn't help make her feel better. I just got the evil eye. I tried to explain statistics and probability - comparing it to the lottery - but failed miserably. So, we went on the web and looked for plane crash statistics (surfing very carefully so I didn't land on any pages with plane crash images).

One of the first statistics I found was that there is a 1 in 34,000,000 chance of dying from a plane while being on the ground. I tried explaining probability again. It still didn't work. I even exaggerated.

Mom: "Well, out of all the people in the US, only one will probably die from a plane while on the ground." (I said I exaggerated.)

Daughter: Gasp! "You mean someone in the US will die from a plane!"

Sigh. We found out that it is safer for her to fly in a plane than it is for her to ride her bike. (And she LOVES riding her bike.) It helped a little. Now she's worried about a propeller falling off the plane or an engine blowing up. But, the bicycle fact keeps nudging her back to rationalization. But they are little tiny nudges that always seem to get pushed back even harder.

Out of sheer helplessness, I've emailed my sister who used to work at Boeing. (But now teaches tenth graders how to make paper airplanes.) Maybe she can tell us the strength of the Krazy Glue they use on the propellers. (Still waiting to hear from her.)

I did learn the best way to search for statistics on plane crashes is to search for statistics on "aviation" rather than plane or airplane.

So how many plane crashes happen every year? The closest figure I got was a US figure of about 36 crashes per year based on the National Transportation and Safety Bureau (NTSB) figures from 1988 - 2007. The NTSB Aviation Page has links to information on investigations and statistics, and their Accident Database has a search engine for detailed accident querys. They also have a link for data and tables on airplane Accidents, Fatalities and Rates. I guess it's no surprise Alaska has some of the highest plane accident rates. Wonder if Sarah flies?

The first statistics I found were from PBS's Nova. PBS has a chart on Commercial Airpcraft Fatalities from 1982-2005. Their article "How Risky is Flying" is where I found the statistics comparing bicyles to planes (and cars and trains - no horses though). Some comparative statistics:

The annual risk of being killed in a plane crash for the average American is about 1 in 11 million.

...the annual risk of being killed in a motor vehicle crash for the average American, which is about 1 in 5,000.

...the likelihood of dying from heart disease is much higher (1 in 400 per year, for the average American.)

Eight year olds don't really think about dying from heart disease though. Of course, most eight year olds don't think about dying from a plane falling into their house either.

Using the search engine on my blog I was also able to find statistics from the Census Department and Bureau of Labor Statistics on fatality statistics from plane crashes per industry.

Wikipedia has an entry on plane crashes, and I also just recently (like a couple seconds ago) found this Wiki on Aircrafts that I'll have to take a look at more thoroughly.

The Horace Mann Reach Every Child website has Lots of Educational Links to Resources on Airplanes for all ages, and I also stumbled on this comprehensive list of links to Aviation Sites that must have taken a great deal of time to put together.

The Airline Pilots Association has their own website, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has a lot to say about airplane safety. Hmmm...maybe she should write them a letter. Great homework assignment. Doesn't seem to be good timing to write the President now anyhow. I don't see anything on their HELP webpage about how to convince an 8 year old a plane isn't going to fall on the house.

Maybe if she's in the air instead of the ground she won't worry about it so much. Maybe she could start training for her pilot's license. Then she'll be in control instead of her imagination.

Links to Federal Statistics on Economics from the US Government

The economy is a hot topic in the US - although for me it's more like the country song that sings "Wall Street fell but we were so poor we couldn't tell..." - so I'm really not stressing over the avalanche of crumbling corporations that are filling the avenues of Wall Street.

I've been involved in some articles and research on Internet Piracy and am now addicted to the topic. This blog post was going to be about Internet Piracy - but time is lacking and the research I've collected is overwhelming me now. (But I can't wait to start ranting on the manipulated statistics that the RIAA is putting out and the international bullying that the US Government has been rightly accused of.) As I was browsing this morning I came across some government links that might help someone looking for some offical data on US Economics, the Federal Reserve and all that fun stuff. So, in the spirit of sharing - I do now share:

The Economic Report of the President

"The Economic Report of the President is an annual report written by the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. It overviews the nation's economic progress using text and extensive data appendices."


Federal Reserve System Website

From their website: "...provides the nation with a safe, flexible and stable monetary and financial system." That's not what I hear on Wall Street. (Is anyone laughing as hard as I am?)


Federal Reserve Board - 12 Districts

"The Federal Reserve officially identifies Districts by number and Reserve Bank city. In the 12th District, the Seattle Branch serves Alaska, and the San Francisco Bank serves Hawaii. The System serves commonwealths and territories as follows: the New York Bank serves the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; the San Francisco Bank serves American Samoa, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The Board of Governors revised the branch boundaries of the System in February 1996." Click on the map to enter the website for the individual district.



Department of Energy Price Trends

Includes links to statistics and data on petroleum, gas, diesel, historical energy data and current gas price information.



List of Department of Energy Stakeholders

Includes links to State Energy Websites and Economic Dispatch Reports.


Federal Housing Administration

Mortgage and foreclosure information.


Budget of the United States Government

Ya. Right.


Search Engine Catalog for US Government Publications

You can search by keyword through federal depositories. I did a search for "statistics economics" and there were over 15,000 results.


Search for Economic Indicator Information by Year

"Available from April 1995 forward, this monthly compilation is prepared for the Joint Economic Committee by the Council of Economic Advisors and provides economic information on prices, wages, production, business activity, purchasing power, credit, money and Federal finance." I tested it out and there are plenty of government statistics available in handy dandy data sets.



Energy Information Administration

For official energy statistics from the US Government.


Search Engine and Statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco

Looks like a decent search engine. Links to economic and banking data and statistics.


Louisiana State University Links on Economic Statistics and Websites

List of links to economic journals and government websites (some of which I've listed in this blog).


Economagic

I don't know where this website came from - but it has links to Federal Reserve, Census and Commerce Statistics. If you need some quick details..this might be worth a look. Some of the data is arranged in timelimes. A little congested, but could be valuable nonetheless.

Which reminds me, can't forget to post the US Department of Commerce Economics link.

Tons of national and international data and statistics on commerce, exporting, importing, employment and all that commerce-y kind of stuff. Links to other US Commerce departments too.

The weather has been in the news as much as government bailouts. How about the Economic and Social Benefits of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


United Nations Economic Commission for Europe

Okay, it's not a US website - but there are a slew of statistics...


United for a Fair Economy is a non-profit organzation that supplies interesting economic data in their Executive Excess 2008 Report that dried my (absent) tears for Wall Street.

The report also finds that S&P 500 CEOs averaged $10.5 million in pay in 2007, 344 times the pay of typical American workers. Compensation levels for private investment fund managers soared even further. The top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers averaged $588 million each, more than 19,000 times as much as typical U.S. workers earned.

This report was created in collaboration with the Institute for Policy Studies. The IPS has substantial data in pdf report form on their IPA Reports link such as Analysis: U.S. Department of Energy Budget FY 2009, Debt and Trade and Challenging Corporate Investor Rule.

The ten year old website Global Issues is a rich resource for data on poverty, economics, trade, health and thousands of other topics including these (approximately) 67 links on Poverty and Economics. Okay, I admit, I'm not that poor, especially by international standards. And as long as I can pay my internet bill I'll be happy. A steady supply of coffee and chocolate is a luxury/weakness I find hard to do without. (Yes, I do try to buy Fair Trade products - but I'm in the boonies here.)

Back to the rich executives. Need market information? Okay, there's a zillion or more websites with market statistics. The Wall Street Journal has their website Market Watch which pretty much reports everything you're likely to read anywhere else anyhow.

Hope these can be of some assistance to you. These websites (and other references for statistics) are included in this blog's "Search for Statistics" search engine at the top of the page. So if you're looking for some quick statistics, it probably wouldn't hurt to do a search in our search engine first. If you need more links on energy statistics, check out our post on Oil and the Russia Georgia War.

I just read there was a rebound in the stocks. So, while you're having fun letting visions of numbers run through your head, I'll be heading off to check my virtual stocks. (They're much safer.) Have fun with your search! (And always feel free to comment if you need help finding something and maybe I can help.)

Post script September 19th 2008: Just want to add this link I just read from a DIGG submission: Salaries of Today's Wall Street CEOs.

Post script September 27th 2008: Saw this government economic analysis website that is just stuffed with statistics! It's called "Shadow Government Statistics" by John Williams. If you're looking for heavy-duty economic analysis you want to follow John's shadow!

Browsing Browser Statistics

Reporting Statistics does hereby give thanks to Ourblogtemplates.com for providing me with a blog template that works in Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer.

I'm an avid Opera browser fan, but according to www.w3school.com and their 2008 Browser Statistics, I'm in the minority. Internet Explorer is still the most widely used browser, but Firefox is quickly meeting them halfway. W3school reports that as of July 2008, Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 are running neck and neck, and 26.4% and 25.3% respectively. Some late adopters, only .3%, are still hanging on to IE5. Firefox has gained almost half the market - quickly gathering up 42.6% of internet users. Poor Opera, only 1.9% have realized how wonderful the Opera browser is. Opera is a lot faster than IE and Firefox and is highly customizable. Disclosure: I have nothing to gain by promoting any browser. I just really like Opera. Hey, out of 215 million internet users in the US alone reported by Plunkett Research, 1.9% isn't too bad.

A great website that I visit frequently for Internet stats is Internet World Stats. If you need Internet Statistics, you'll find demographics like local, global, regional Internet and population information and all kinds of graphs to go along with it. Internet Stats is in my permanent bookmarks. I think they may sell some data, but there are pages and pages of free data for you to use to give your reports or research some more awe-inspiring data. (THAT many people are on the Internet?!!? I didn't even know that many people were alive!)

I'm adding to this post on August 26, 2008 after reading some more browser statistics on Tech Republic. The browser share they quote from The Counter is significantly different than W3Schools. (The Counter charges $19.95 and W3Schools is free.) They list IE at 77% and Firefox at 17%. I don't know about you - but that sounds far too low for fast-growing Firefox. For this blog, Firefox is the browser of choice and holds the majority at 41% and IE at 28%. W3School is given high regard in developer circles - and if you need to quote some browser statistics - quote the statistics from W3School. The Tech Republic article has some interesting comments and it's a worthwhile read for developers.

Adding to the post September 18, 2008: Just found this link with a graph on browsers in Russia from the Russian Opera blogger Andrey Petrov. Here are some more Opera browser statistics from his blog. He has a new baby in the home..so the posts are a little outdated - but I thought they might be of interest to someone researching browser statistics.

Update November 2009: Google Chrome Captures 3.6% of market.

2009 trends in browser statistics according to W3schools. Woo hoo! Opera is up to 2.3%!

For interest, there's a January 2009 article which lists reasons why statistics from the past may be skewed (i.e, election time).

Then there's Opera mini which has a far larger global share in the mobile browser wars.

Statistics on browsers in Russia.

The Opera 10 announcement at Canada.com states:

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used for about 60 percent of global Internet traffic, and Mozilla's Firefox has about 30 percent, with usage of Opera, Google and Apple all around 3 percent each, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.

Opera has a small share of the global desktop browser market, but its browser is the most popular in countries like Russia or Ukraine, and its mobile browser is the most widely used browser on handsets.

Opera also has their "State of the Mobile Web" report with current global statistics on mobile browser usage, particularly Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Nonetheless, a simple chart showing the growth of Opera mini clearly demonstrates it's growth, and Stat Counter has 2009 statistics demonstrating that Opera Mini is overtaking the Iphone for mobile browsing. A September 2009 article from FinChannel (global financial news), also reports Opera Mini as the most popular mobile browser. Their quote:

Now, more than 31.9 million people use Opera Mini to browse the Web from their mobile phones. In August, Opera Mini gained at least one new user every second.

An article from Tech Arena has the same quote, but it goes further to list Opera statistics from Europe and around the globe. Here's their take on the top countries using Opera Mini:

The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, Nigeria, United Kingdom and Poland. There is no change to the top 10 countries this month.

But, those top 10 have changed. WatBlog reports the current top ten as of September as:

Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam

They also list the top sites visited in India, comparing Google, Yahoo and others, and has other stats on Opera mobile browsing from September 2009.

Since I have other posts related to Africa and I'm finding interest in statistics from Africa from my readers, here's a website dedicated to PC and phone mobility in Nigeria, with statistics on Opera Mini in Nigeria.

There is a very resourceful wiki at W3org that lists mobile browsing statistics in developing countires, and has links to statistics on mobile browsing in Africa, including a Africa 2008 Mobile Fact Book in pdf format, and a pdf file with 2009 stats on mobile phone usage in Africa. More statistics on Africa browsing and mobility, including the expensive costs and transmission data, can be found at Martin Sauter's blog post on Africa and the Mobile Internet.

Boy did this update take on an angle I didn't expect. I'll have to get these recent links into my search engine.

Have fun keeping up with the browser wars - and don't let the statistics on mobile browser wars go unnoticed.