Plus data on healthcare spending, infant mortality rates and more.

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** What’s safer: flying or driving?
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On Friday, January 5, a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California, made an emergency landing after a section of its fuselage blew out at about 16,000 feet in the air. The Federal Aviation Administration subsequently ordered airlines to ground and inspect certain Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. This incident has people wondering about the safest way to travel: flying or driving ([link removed]) ?
* The average annual fatality rate for air travel from 2002 to 2020 was 0.01 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. The rate for passenger cars and trucks on highways, though declining, was 50 times that at 0.5 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2020.
* From 2002 to 2020, 755 people died on domestic airline flights. Nearly 75% of these deaths were from accidents involving taxis, or small planes of 30 seats or fewer that operate on demand.

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* In 2020 alone, 30,250 people died while riding in passenger vehicles. Forty-five percent of these were in cars, 34% in light trucks, and 18% on motorcycles.
* There were 614 serious injuries in the air from 2002 to 2020, an average of 32 per year. Comparatively, Americans suffered about 2.3 million injuries per year in passenger cars and trucks on highways.
* 2020 also had 6,516 pedestrian deaths and 938 bicyclist deaths. For more on that, read this article ([link removed]) .

Get more facts to compare flying versus driving ([link removed]) .


** Healthcare spending is up by how much?
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Everyone, from individuals to private insurance companies to the government, is spending more on healthcare than decades ago. But just how much is being spent ([link removed]) ? USAFacts broke the data down by age groups and the biggest spending categories.
* National spending on personal healthcare — including private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and out-of-pocket expenses by everyday people — grew from $214.3 billion in 1980 to $3.6 trillion in 2021. That’s a 1,558% increase, outpacing inflation almost sevenfold​​.

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* Since 1960, hospital care has consistently been the largest category of personal healthcare spending. In 2021, it accounted for 37% of personal healthcare expenditures, or $1.3 trillion​​.
* In 2020, spending for individuals 65 and older was $22,356, five times higher than spending per child ($4,217) and more than double that of adults younger than 65 ($9,154).
* Home healthcare spending rose 5,000% from 1980 to 2021, the biggest increase of any category. In contrast, spending on nursing care facilities and continuing-care retirement communities rose the least, up 1,085%​​.
* There’s no one thing driving up healthcare costs over the past 40 years. Factors include technological advancements and demographic changes such as an aging population​​.

See more charts of the biggest healthcare expenditures ([link removed]) .


** Data behind the news
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Last Tuesday, someone hacked into the Security and Exchange Commission’s X/Twitter account and posted false news regarding an anticipated announcement about the cryptocurrency bitcoin. (The SEC did announce its approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds the next day). The FBI is investigating the hack. In the meantime, here’s the data on cyber-attacks ([link removed]) in the US.

Maine’s secretary of state and Colorado’s Supreme Court have recently moved to bar former President Donald Trump from appearing on those states’ presidential primary ballots. The move had some people wondering: Is Colorado a swing state? What about Maine? ([link removed])

USAFacts attended the Iowa Caucus to bring caucusgoers government data ([link removed]) , and to ask voters what government issues ([link removed]) matter to them. See even more from Iowa on USAFacts’ TikTok ([link removed]) .

We’ve posted several new articles at USAFacts. Have you kept up? Take this quiz to find out ([link removed]) .


** One last fact
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Mississippi had 2021’s highest infant mortality rate ([link removed]) : 9.39 deaths per 1,000 births. Arkansas followed with a rate of 8.59. North Dakota had the lowest rate, 2.77. Vermont had the second-lowest rate at 3.16.
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