What's Changed This Decade (1999-2009)

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Source: Online Education

Sometimes it’s great to look back and see what has happened in the last ten years. The last 10 years from 1999-2009 has seen some dramatic changes, demographic shifts, and rapid proliferation of internet technologies. We have also seen the balance of power begin to shift internationally as foreign countries have grown their economies and we have increased our national debt. Let’s have a look at some numbers to demonstrate the significance of these changes.

Since 1999, 23 million people in American have gotten married and sadly already 12 million of those marriages have ended in divorce. Another interesting fact is that of those 23 million marriages 80,000 were same sex marriages.

The Gross Domestic Product of the US grew 55% which allowed it to stay the world’s largest economy even after the 2008 financial crisis. However China is growing quickly alongside the US as it grew an astounding 300% in the last decade. This means that China has gone from the 7th largest economy to the 3rd in just 10 short years.

The US not just grown in GDP, it has grown its national debt prodigiously. At the start of 1999 the national debt was about $5.65 trillion, but by 2009 it has soared by over $6 trillion dollars to an astounding $12.1 trillion. 11% of this debt is actually owned by China and Japan giving them and increasing sway in the future or the US economy.

Gas prices have doubled from $1.29 per gallon in 1999 to $2.52 per gallon in 2009 and likely by the time this article is published will be even higher. In response Americans have purchased 1.9 million hybrid cars and the national average MPG has improved from 16.7 to 21.1.

800 million people were born, 7 million were infected with HIV. 60 million were killed by starvation but 1.12 million Americans were killed by obesity. Natural disasters killed 570,000 but even more were killed by war and terrorists amounting to 3.2 million by the end of the decade.

Internet usage exploded from 350 million to 1.7 billion internet users. Of those 1.7 billion 350 million have Facebook accounts and 11.5 million play the online MMORPG known as World of Warcraft. 1,000,000,000,000 web pages were created, with 13 million Wikipedia articles written. 8 billion songs were purchased and downloaded –and if you think that figure is large- some 160 billion were pirated. Lastly, cell phone use increased from 1 in 10 to 2 in 3 people.



See Also

Local History Schools

Local Liberal Arts and Humanities Schools