Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

This morning around 7:46 am (EDT) the United States’ population reached 300,000,000! The United States Census Bureau reports that at the net increase in population of one person every 11 seconds, the big milestone is today. It took just under 29 years for the population to jump 100 million. Impressive, eh?

Some interesting facts from the Census Bureau (See the site for more) - 1915 is the 100 million mark, 1967 is the 200 million mark:

Price of a new home
2006: $290,600
1967: $24,600 ($149,147 in 2006 dollars)
1915: $3,200 ($64,158 in 2006 dollars)

Cost for a gallon of regular gas
2006: $3.04 (as of Aug. 7)
1967: 33 cents ($2.00 in 2006 dollars)
1915: 25 cents ($5.01 in 2006 dollars)

World Population
2006: 6.5 billion
1967: 3.5 billion
1915: 1.8 billion

Coming to America [Ed. Note: and yet so many people hate America?]
2006: 34.3 million
Number of foreign-born people. They comprise 12 percent of the total population. Mexico is the leading country of origin. Data pertain to 2004.

1967: 9.7 million
Number of foreign-born people. They comprised 5 percent of the total population. Italy was the leading country of origin. Data pertain to 1960.

1915: 13.5 million
Number of foreign-born people. They comprised 15 percent of the total population. Germany was the leading country of origin. Data pertain to 1910.

Tuberculosis
Death rate from this disease per 100,000 population.
2006: 0.2
1967: 3.5
1915: 140.1

Our Aging Nation
Number of people age 65 and older.
2006: 36.8 million
1967: 19.1 million
1915: 4.5 million

Education
Percentage of the population, age 25 and older, who had at least a high school diploma.
2006: 85.2%
1967: 51.1%
1915: 13.5%

Our friendly blogger across the pond, Tim Blair has posted his tribute to the milestone: Three Hundred Million. He writes:

Since so few US media outlets were inclined to celebrate this non-grim milestone, the job was outsourced to a little Australian blog. Following is a small sample of Americans, from which you may reasonably extrapolate a figure of 300 million. Or 957 trillion, if you work for Lancet …

Pop over for a visit to check out the photographic tribute. A picture of my family was included! It’s a nice post. Kristin has also added her contribution.