You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.
1.4 percent
The state of Mississippi is barely approving anyone for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a federal welfare program for low-income residents. Last year, 11,717 people applied, and just 167 were approved, according to an analysis by the progressive news site ThinkProgress. That measly approval rate, 1.4 percent, is a huge outlier. [ThinkProgress]
21 percentage points
On Tuesday morning, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she will seek an early snap election on June 8. The decision might have been motivated by the Conservative Party’s robust support at the moment, with a recent YouGov poll showing them up 21 percentage points over Labour. [The New York Times, Jon Williams]
88 percent
Zendrive, a driving analytics company, found that three million drivers, traveling 5.6 billion miles, were using their phones 88 percent of their journeys. As Wired wrote, “The average driver spends 3.5 minutes on the phone per one hour trip, a stat that sounds worse when you realize just a two-second distraction increases your risk of crashing by 20 percent.” [Wired]
20 million
U.S. income taxes are due today, so be sure to get on that. In 2015, more than 20 million people — about 1-in-7 filers, waited until the final week to send in their tax returns. That’s kind of ridiculous because most people get a refund for all their trouble anyway. [FiveThirtyEight]
98.75 million subscribers
Number of Netflix subscribers at the end of March, as the company added fewer new members than anticipated in the first three months of the year. [Variety]
$823 billion
Amount invested into Vanguard mutual funds over the last three years. That’s a ton of money: Over the same period, the entire rest of the mutual fund industry, more than 4,000 firms, took in a net of $97 billion. [The New York Times]
If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.