Census Bureau report — a snapshot of us, from iPods to pills

MILWAUKEE — We crave the constant stream of music from MP3 players and the age-defying jolt of Botox injections.

We drink more bottled water than milk, barbecue more than we bake and spend more than twice as much on prescription drugs as sporting goods.

This is America in all its numerical glory, as revealed in the Census Bureau's 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States.

First published in 1878, the abstract is the statistical guide to the "social, political and economic organization of the United States." The edition released Thursday features nearly 1,000 pages of facts and figures that provide a snapshot of a country in constant change.

It takes census experts 10 months to compile an array of statistics, and they're on constant watch for numbers that illuminate new trends in a country of 300 million people.

"I've been working on the abstract for more than 30 years," said Lars Johanson, chief of the Statistical Compendia Branch. "There is a very simple reason for that. We are working on so many different subjects, and the work never gets boring."

Johanson and his staff compile information on products that didn't exist a decade ago and dig into numbers that reveal the way Americans live:

• Factory sales of iPods and other MP3 players rose from $424 million in 2003 to a projected $5.9 billion in 2007, while sales of digital TVs tripled from $8.7 billion in 2003 to a projected $26.3 billion.

• Cosmetic procedures doubled between 2000 and 2006. More than 11.4 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2006, including 3.1 million Botox injections, which nearly tripled over that time.

Breast-augmentation procedures for women nearly doubled.

"In this very competitive world, people are driven to look as good as they can for their given age," said George Korkos, a cosmetic surgeon in Waukesha, Wis.

• We shopped till we dropped, with $93 billion in retail sales recorded as e-commerce in 2005, a 2.5 percent drop in the bucket compared with the total of $3.7 trillion in retail sales.

Yet for all that excitement, we still engage in age-old leisure activities:

• In 2006, 41 million adult Americans baked, 74 million barbecued, and 5.7 million flew kites. More adults played computer games (43 million) than board games (39 million), while 6 million participated in fantasy sports leagues.

• By far the biggest leisure-time activity was dining out — 106 million adults ate in restaurants at least once in 2006. And in 2004 Americans consumed 22 percent more calories each day — 3,900 — compared with the daily caloric intake in the 1970s.

Patti Cobb, chief clinical dietitian at Froedtert Hospital, blames overconsumption in part on what she calls the "clean-plate syndrome."

"As we are depending more on restaurant meals, there is more of a tendency to finish food there than to take it home. We have that perceived value of 'more is better,' and if we are eating meals away from home, we want to get a lot for our money," she said.

• From 1980 to 2005, per-capita milk consumption dropped 24 percent, from almost 28 gallons per person per year to 21 gallons. Beer consumption fell 12 percent to 21.3 gallons.

Meanwhile, Americans drink more than 51 gallons of soft drinks each year, a 53 percent increase from 1980. The rate of bottled-water consumption has increased by more than nine times since 1980 to more than 25 gallons per person.

• Doctors are writing more prescriptions than ever.

Prescriptions have increased over the past decade to 3.4 billion annually, a 61 percent increase. Retail sales of prescription drugs jumped 250 percent from $72 billion to $250 billion, while the average price of prescriptions has more than doubled from $30 to $68.