US Statistics

There are some really interesting statistics at Ranking America.  This site provides a number of graphics illustrating how the US compares with a number of other countries on assorted categories.  The US does rather poorly on many indices of health and wellbeing, compared to other developed countries.

Some of the more telling: US ranks:

• 33rd out of 34 selected countries (Europe + Japan + US) in acceptance of evolution
• 2nd out of 35 selected countries in child poverty behind only Romania
• 12th out of 12 countries in introduction of sex education 
• Abominable in arts funding:  $0.44 per capita, as compared with, say, middle-of-the-pack Northern Ireland, which spent $13.62 in 2005
• And one I am certain you have often wondered about:  2nd in imports of asses, with 28.1% of the world's ass total imports (second only to Yemen).  

I really like two things about this site
1)  It provides simple graphics (generally bar charts) to show relative rankings
2)  It provides sources for the statistics it is using.

Some of the graphics are a tiny bit confusing or misleading, where they show the US relationship to the top 10 (even though the US isn't actually in the top 10, and they don't tell you what position the US actually has.)