Notable numbers: religion, real estate and lottery spending
Notable numbers
Statistics from the past week that deserve a doubletake
$70.1 billion What Americans in the 43 states where lotteries are legal spent on lotto games in 2014
$63 billionWhat Americans in all 50 states spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movie tickets and recorded music sales combined
78.4 The percentage of Americans who identified as Christian in 2007
70.6 The percentage who were Christian in 2014
16.1 The percentage of Americans who were religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – in 2007
22.8 The percentage who said that in 2014
77 The percentage of American Hindu adults who have at least a bachelor’s degree
59 The percentage of American Jews who do
24 The percentage of American Protestants who do
44 The percentage of American Jewish households that report an annual household income of $100,000 or more
36 The percentage of Hindu households that do
53 The percentage of historically black Protestant households that report household incomes under $30,000
4 The percentage increase in Triangle home sales in April compared with the same month last year
52 The percentage decrease in housing market inventory over the past five years
56 The increase in sales over that period
17 The percentage decrease in the number of homes on the market in April over April of last year
59 The average days on the market in April
73 The average days in April 2014
127 The average days five years ago
$1.6 million The amount that a state audit found a retired Medicaid administrator wasted by hiring too many temporary employees she personally knew and paying them too much
This story was originally published May 15, 2015 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Notable numbers: religion, real estate and lottery spending."