Friday, August 22, 2008

Some stats on Liberia

These stats come from the UN statistics website. and then I extrapolated some more information from it.

Average annual income per capita:

in Liberia: $192.00
in the US: $43,562 (we make on average 226x more money than the average Liberian), Most of us make more per day than the average Liberian makes per year.

There are 1,971,300 men and 1,970,900 women in Liberia
There are 152,004,400 men and 156,793,900 women in the US

147,834 people over age 60 in Liberia
62,501,783 people over age 60 in the US

Percentage of population below the age of 15 years:
Liberia: 47.2% (1,861,190 people)
US: 19.6% (60,524,467 people)

Percentage of men over 60 years of age:
Liberia: 3.4% (67,024 people)
US: 17.6% (26,752,774 people)

Percentage of women over 60 years of age:
Liberia: 4.1% (80,810 people)
US: 22.8% (35,749,009 people)

Number of people under 15 for each person over 60:
Liberia: 12.5
US: 0.98

Liberia is a nation of children with no older generation to teach them. What heritage is being passed to the next generation Liberia? The older generation is already pretty much dead. The only heritage that can be passed is whatever remnant of teaching the young people received before their fathers and mothers died, whatever meaning they can come up with amongst themselves, and then (and probably mainly) whatever influence a foreign culture has on them.

Another interesting fact is that Liberia has one of the fastest growing Muslim populations on earth.

In contrast to this, America is on the brink of becoming a dying culture, with less people under 15 than we have over 60.