While I'm working on my book that's about travel and knitting, I found myself looking up a variety of stats for the countries that will be profiled. Basically, I'm writing a book filled with knitting designs, so I'm writing about the countries that inspired the designs.
Though it's going to be a fairly light book - nothing controversial, only fun - I did find some interesting stats and thought I'd share them with you here. The countries that are highlighted, or profiled, in my book are:
- Austria
- Bulgaria
- France
- Greece
- Spain
- Turkey
- United Kingdom
- United States of America
The reason these countries were chosen is solely because I had knitting designs already completed (or well on their way) that could easily be applied to these particular places. The stats I'm about to post are per the CIA Factbook. Hey - I'm not an economist, nor am I a business writer or anything, so I went to an easily accessible source. So while my friends on Facebook were letting me know what they knew about all these countries (Thanks for that, friends!), I was gathering some statistical information.
OK, let's start with some basics. Each group of stats will include each country's individual ranking.
Population (July 2012 est.)
USA (#3) 313,847,465
Turkey (#17) 79,749,461
France (#21) 65,630,692
UK (#22) 63,047,162
Spain (#27) 47,042,984
Greece (#78) 10,767,827
Austria (#94) 8,219,743
Bulgaria (#100) 7,037,935
Size (Area)
USA - #3
Turkey - #37
France - #43
Spain - #52
UK - #80
Greece - #97
Bulgaria - #105
Austria - #114
Moving on to some financials, I looked up the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. The Factbook defined this as "Purchasing Power Parity." I didn't really know what that was either. It went on to say the GDP at Purchasing Power Parity exchange rate is the sum value of all goods and services produced in the country valued at prices prevailing in the United States.
GDP
USA - #2
UK - #9
France - #10
Spain - #14
Turkey - #17
Austria - #36
Greece - #41
Bulgaria - #71
Interesting that USA is #2, but listed as #1 Is the European Union.
Per Capita GDP
USA (#12) $48,100
Austria (#18) $41,700
UK (#34) $35,900
France (#35) $35,000
Spain (#43) $30,600
Greece (#49) $27,600
Turkey (#86) $14,600
Bulgaria (#90) $13,500
What I was happy to see was the rather high literacy rate in all the countries. Sadly, I was a bit surprised at Turkey because I thought it would actually be lower. Perhaps I shouldn't have thought that.
Literacy Rate
France, UK, US - 99%
Bulgaria - 98.2%
Austria - 98%
Spain - 97%
Greece - 96%
Turkey - 87.5%
Finally for tonight, I'm going to add in Life Expectancy.
Life Expectancy (At birth)
France (14) 81.46 years
Spain (15) 81.27 years
UK (30) 80.17 years
Greece (31) 80.05 years
Austria (33) 79.91 years
USA (50) 78.49 years
Bulgaria (112) 73.84 years
Turkey (124) 72.77 years
I'm surprised that the U.S. isn't ranked higher than it is. But I also read today that over 1/3 of adults are considered obese - nearly 40% of all women. YIKES! Need to work on that healthier lifestyle. Maybe we should all move to France and drink more wine? (I love France!) I have more stats to share later on, but in the meantime, I think this is all pretty interesting. What do you think?
