Interesting Trends That You Should Know About

I found these interesting statistics in Richard Watson's Riveting Text entitled 2009+ 10 trends: Predictions and Provocations, and felt impelled to share them:

• There are now 3.3 billion mobile phone accounts globally, a figure roughly equal to half the world’s population.
• There is expected to be a 36% increase in the number of people aged 75+ in Japan between 2005 and 2015. During the same period the number of people aged under 5 years-of-age is predicted to decline by 13%.
• The Self-storage industry in America has grown more than 40-fold since the 1960s and now consists of over a billion square-feet of empty (and not so empty) space. In value terms the industry is now considerably larger than the US music industry.
• 24% of Russians expect to see a clash with the US in the near future compared with only 4% of Chinese.
• Around 80% of all news available on the Internet originates in newspapers.
• 9.5 million people now have financial assets of at least US$1 million.
• 14,000 new cars take to the road in China every single day.
• 90% of all scientists and engineers with PhDs will live in Asia by 2010.
• Of the 120,000 blogs created daily, 50% are about the same subject - the writer.
• By the year 2015, West Africa will become the world’s largest source of crude oil outside of the Middle East.
• 50% of New York University students said they would “permanently forfeit” the right to vote in exchange for a one-off payment of US$1million.
• 80% of UK wealth is held by people aged 55+
• Around 100 million people are thought to have died prematurely during the 20th Century due to cigarette smoking.
• In 2005, 40% of UK weddings involved someone that was getting married for at least the second time.
• Consumer spending by those aged 65-74 in the UK is predicted to increase by 40% by 2017.
• In 2003, the minimum wage in the UK was £4.20 per hour. In the US it was $5.15. In China it was 18 pence (29 cents) and in India it was 7 pence (11 cents).
• The number of non-food antibacterial products launched globally grew from less than 200 in 2003 to 1,610 in 2006 according to Mintel’s New Products Database.
• US $750 billion is now managed globally under Islamic or Sharia principles.
• In 2020 the dominant family type in Australia will be couples without children.
• Smoking kills 25% of all men in the developing world.
• Sales of the five major painkilling medicines grew by 88% in the US between 1997-2005.
• According to the General Social Survey (US) there has been a 300% increase in the number of Americans that have absolutely nobody to talk to about their problems.
• In 1970, 80% of British children walked to school. By 2007 the figure had fallen to 9%.
• 86% of the world’s population will live in emerging markets by the year 2050
• Britons spend 20% of their annual income on leisure, up from 9% in 1957
• To make a cotton T-Shirt requires 27,000 litres of water
• Cement production accounts for 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
• More than 85% of the information held by organizations is unstructured.
• In China there are 228 million Internet users compared to 217 million in the US.
• 55% of women in America dye their hair.