Notable numbers: Prisoners, Christians and fracking violations

18.4 The percentage of U.S. births that were out-of-wedlock in 1980

40.6 The percentage in 2013

33 The percentage of white Americans who believe police in most communities are more likely to use deadly force against a black person

84 The percentage of black Americans who believe that

57 The percentage of white Americans who believe race doesn’t affect use of deadly force

10 The percentage of black Americans who believe that

53 The percentage of Americans last year who approved of gays and lesbians

42 The percentage who approved of evangelical Christians

5 The percentage of the world’s population living in the United States

25 The percentage of the world’s prisoners who are in U.S. prisons

$75 billion What that level of incarceration cost U.S. taxpayers in 2008 – about as much as the food stamp program in 2014

22 The number of prisoners serving long sentences for nonviolent drug crimes in federal prisons whose sentences were commuted by President Obama last week

31.4 The percentage of the world’s population who are Christians

23.2 The percentage who are Muslims

29.7 The percentage who are projected to be Muslim in 2050; Christians are expected to remain at 31.4 percent

45 The percentage of an average person’s disposable income it took in 1950 to be a 10-drink-a-day drinker

3 The percentage it takes now

90 cents The federal excise tax, in today’s dollars, on a standard shot of 40-proof whiskey in 1951

13 cents What it is today

5-fold How much the real federal beer tax has fallen over the same period

2.5 The average times a day oil and gas drillers ran afoul of regulators in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Colorado from 2009 to 2013 for mistakes such as wastewater spills, well leaks or pipeline ruptures during the fracking boom

This story was originally published April 3, 2015 at 5:08 PM with the headline "Notable numbers: Prisoners, Christians and fracking violations."