- The average Japanese woman can expect to live to be 84. The average Botswanan will reach just 39.
- A third of the world's obese people live in the developing world.
- The US and Britain have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world.
- China has 44 million missing women.
- Brazil has more Avon ladies than members of its armed forces.
- Eighty-one per cent of the world's executions in 2002 took place in just three countries: China, Iran and the USA.
- British supermarkets know more about their customers than the British government does.
- Every cow in the European Union is subsidized by $2.50 a day. That's more than what 75 percent of Africans have to live on.
- In more than 70 countries, same-sex relationships are illegal. In nine counties, the penalty is death.
- One in five of the world's people lives on less than $1 a day.
- More than 12,000 women are killed each year in Russia as a result of domestic violence.
- In 2001, 13.2 million Americans had some form of plastic surgery.
- Landmines kill or maim at least one person every hour.
- There are 44 million child laborers in India.
- People in industrialized countries eat between 13 and 15 pounds of food additives every year.
- The golfer Tiger Woods is the world's highest-paid sportsman. He earns $78 million a year—or $148 every second.
- Seven million American women and 1 million American men suffer from and eating disorder.
- Nearly half of British fifteen-year-olds have tried illegal drugs and nearly a quarter are regular cigarette smokers.
- There are 67,000 people employed in the lobbying industry in Washington, DC—125 for each elected member of Congress.
- Cars kill two people every minute.
- Since 1977, there have been nearly 80,000 acts of violence or disruption clinics in North America.
- More people can identify the golden arches of McDonald's than the Christian cross.
- In Kenya, bribery payments make up a third of the average household budget.
- The world's trade in illegal drugs is estimated to be worth around $400 billion—about the same as the world's legal pharmaceutical industry.
- Nearly half of Americans believe aliens have landed on Earth.
- More than 150 countries use torture.
- Every day, one in five of the world's population—some 800 million people—go hungry.
- Black men born in the US today stand a one in three chance of going to jail.
- A third of the world's population is at war.
- The world's oil reserves could be exhausted by 2040.
- Eighty-two percent of the world's smokers live in developing countries.
- More than 70 percent of the wrold's population have never heard a dial tone.
- A quarter of the world's armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources.
- Some 30 million people in Africa are HIV positive.
- Ten languages die out every year.
- More people die each year from suicide than in all the world's armed conflicts.
- Every week, an average of 88 children are expelled from American schools for bringing a gun to class.
- There are at least 300,000 prisoners of conscience in the world.
- Two million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation each year.
- There are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world
- Nearly 26 million people voted in the 2001 British General Election. More than 32 million votes were cast in the first season of Pop Idol.
- America spends $10 billion on pornography every year—the same amount it spends on foreign aid.
- In 2003, the US spent $396 billion on it military. This is 33 times the combined military spending of the seven 'rogue states'.
- There are 27 million slaves in the world today.
- Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. That's enough bottles to reach all the way to the moon every three weeks
- The average urban Briton is caught on camera up to 300 times a day.
- Some 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into Western Europe every year.
- A kiwi fruit flown from New Zealand to Britain emits five times its own weight in greenhouse gases.
- The US owes the United Nations more than $1 billion in unpaid dues.
- Children living in poverty are three times more likely to suffer a mental illness than children from wealthy families.
From 50 Facts That Should Change The World
These facts were correct at the date of publication in 2004, they may have changed since.
