Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes — Mark J. Penn with E. Kinney Zalesne

You probably saw this book in my sidebar about a month ago.  It’s an interesting little read with a very useful table of contents that lets you jump around to the topics you’re interested in and skip the ones you don’t care for.  The book was published in 2007 so the information is relatively recent.  Here are some of the more interesting tidbits (I’ll skip the references for easier reading):

• 3 million American adults have turned online dates into a long-term relationship or marriage — that’s the same number of couples in America who say they met in church.
• On average, Americans work over 1,800 hours per year, substantially more than most workers around the world.  Although we get fewer vacation days per year than other Western countries, we let more than twice as many go unused.
• Since 1970, the number of women lawyers in America has grown 2,900%.
• Today in America, there are three times as many professional tanning parlors as there are Starbucks.
• 7 out of the 10 night-owl nations (large percentage of people go to sleep after midnight) are Asian.
• Noise reaches the potential for permanent damage at about 85 decibels. Hair dryers come in at 90. Noise on a subway platform is 105. In an airplane cabin, it’s 110. At a rock concert, it’s 120. Apparently nine seconds into a rock concert, you experience hearing loss.
• 63% of American households have pets.
• The percentage of split-ticket voters has gone up 42% since 1952.
• Between 1972 and 2004, the combined prison and jail population in the U.S. went from 330,000 to over 2 million.
• About 1.5 million children in the U.S. between the ages of 8 and 18 are vegetarians.
• The society with the largest proportion of centenarians in the world is the Japanese island of Okinawa.
• The typical vacation-home buyer earns just $71,000. The median income of investment-home-buyers is $85,700. The median purchase price of second homes is under $200,000. Second homes are a middle-class craze.
• More than 1 in 3 Americans aged 25-29 have a tattoo.
• The U.S. adult population as a whole is about 49% extroverted.  Surprisingly, nearly 60% of the most enthusiastic tech users are extroverted.
• About 40 million adults in the U.S. regularly visit Internet pornography sites.  That’s more than ten times the number of people who regularly watch baseball.
• The average video/computer game player is 33 years old.
• The average age at which Americans lose their virginity is 16.9.
• In Italy, a whopping 82 percent of men aged 18-30 are still living at home with their parents.

Last Modified : August 19th, 2008 Filed under : Texts Navigate : Previous post / Next post