There’s a good chance that, whatever money you make in a year, you could probably do with a bit more. Most of us aren’t extravagantly wealthy and our annual income is enough to get by, but a few thousand dollars more would certainly make things more comfortable. 

There is a very diverse range of incomes these days when you have people who can make over a billion dollars a year and others are struggling to just get food on the table. With that in mind, there’s a lot of interesting things to learn about annual incomes in general. 

10. The Average Broadway Theater Goer Makes Over $260,000

Live theater took a bit of a hit during the Covid pandemic but it’s been slowly regaining ground and returning to its former popularity.  Broadway made about $1.5 billion in the 2022-2023 season and the US theater industry in total made $8.7 billion in 2023. So what kind of people are going to see plays these days?

People who frequent live theater average between 40 and 45 years of age, it’s not typically a young person’s cup of tea. On Broadway, the average annual income of a theatergoer in 2019 was $261,000. For the 2022-2023 season that went up to $271,000. The average ticket price for a show is $161. 

Going to the theater isn’t a daily or even weekly occurrence for most people, and the bulk of Broadway audiences are tourists stopping in for a one-time experience. If you ever wondered what sort of people were heading to see Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, now you have a bit of a better idea.

9. Finland Fines Speeders Based on Annual Income

Over 40 million Americans are ticketed for speeding every year. People just really like to go fast. And depending on where you are and how fast you’re going there can be a lot of variation when it comes to the cost of that ticket. You may pay as little as $25 but it can get up to over $1,000 sometimes. 

Things work differently in Finland. Finland is less concerned with where you got ticketed or how fast you were going than they are with how much money you have in general. Tickets are based on your annual income which is meant to be more of a deterrent than static fines which would mean nothing to a rich person. 

In 2023, a million was hit with a $130,000 fine for traveling 18.6 miles per hour over the speed limit. It’s believed that the fine may be the most any speeder has ever been fined anywhere in the world. 

The speeder, millionaire Anders Wiklof, didn’t seem as annoyed as you might think. For one, he’s a millionaire, so he’s probably fine. But also, he was quoted as saying “I had just started slowing down, but I guess that didn’t happen fast enough. It’s how it goes” and that he regrets it. 

Finland’s math for coming up with fines is based on what you make in a day divided by two. So if Wiklof had been employed part-time at a low-paying job he may have only had a $20 fine. That said, if you are significantly over the speed limit, they may make it several days’ worth of pay, not just one.

8. Your Annual Income Increases With Your Height

It’s not uncommon knowledge that attractive people tend to have things easier in life. That doesn’t make it fair, but it’s still the way things go. A lot of things go into being attractive, at least in the conventional and generally accepted sense. One thing that is usually considered a point in your favor is your height. 

The taller you are, the more attractive you are considered at least if you’re a man. Have you ever been afraid that tall people have an advantage over you beyond what they can reach on top shelves? You’re not going to like this entry.

Studies have shown that your annual income increases by almost $800 for every inch of height that you have over the average person. One study showed that someone who is 6 feet tall will earn, on average, $166,000 more over 30 years than someone who is 5-foot-5 regardless of sex, age, or weight. One in China suggested every centimeter in height increased your annual income by 1.3%. That’s about 3.3% per inch.

7. $60K Per Year Puts You in the Richest 1% of the World 

For several years now people have referred to various income groups by their percentage. As in what percentage of the population falls into that income bracket. So we’ll refer to the wealthiest 1%, or the poorest 50%, or what have you. To be in the wealthiest 1% of Americans, you need an annual salary of $483,000. America is hardly the world, though.

If you want to feel better about your own financial situation, or worse about a lot of other people’s, look at world statistics. If you want to be in the wealthiest 1% globally, you don’t need to make $483,000 per year. Or $300,000 or $200,000 or even $100,000. If your annual income is $60,000 per year after tax then you are the one percent. In 2012 all you needed was $34,000 per year.

How can such a low number, at least by most Western standards, make you seem so wealthy globally? Well, the question answered itself. Those are Western standards. Over 900 million people on earth live on less than $1.25 a day. 

6. The Shorter Your Name is the Higher Your Annual Salary

You already know that if you’re tall, you’re making more money. What else can you do to maximize that annual salary? Shorten your name up and make it real tight. The shorter your name is the higher your salary is going to be. If you’re seven feet tall and your name is Max Pip, you are set. 

According to one study, a short first name is the key to your financial success. Each extra letter in your first name costs you about $3,600 per year. That includes long vs short forms of the same name, so Bart vs Bartholomew or Chris vs Christopher. Pick the short name and reap the rewards.

Weirdly enough, variations of the same name still benefit from brevity. Michele makes more money than Michelle. That extra letter is putting you in the poorhouse. There were a few names that broke the mold, like Christine for women and Wayne for men, but for the most part, you want five or fewer letters to earn the most.

5. Households Earning Under $13,000 May Spend 3% to 9% on Lottery Tickets

Back in 2012 it was reported that households making under $13,000 a year, which is decidedly below the $104,000 per year MIT has calculated as a minimum liveable wage for an American family of four (in 2023, so the numbers are a little off) spends 9% of their income on lottery tickets.

Now, since PBS released that figure in a documentary it has since been noted that it may be wrong and the real number may be 2% to 3% instead, and somehow PBS messed up their figures. There is a rabbit hole to go down trying to explain the different percentages but the result still has you pondering how much money people spend on lottery tickets as a percentage of their entire yearly salary.

The most significant takeaway, and one that may not be hard to wrap your head around, is that people without a lot of money will risk money on a desperate attempt to somehow make more. 

4. For About 1,000 Years the Average Annual Income Never Exceeded $500 

Elon Musk makes about $14 billion per year, which is about $1.6 million per hour, every hour, or $27,000 per minute, or about $456 per second. The average American earns just under $60,000 per year, or just over two minutes of Elon’s time. But that’s all right here in the present. Things weren’t always so high falutin’.

After the fall of the Roman empire, the average person’s annual wage was about $500. That was in money calculated in the early 2000s. So, if we’re talking cash from back then, it was maybe a few copper coins and some chicken feet or something. But the annual income stayed at that level for centuries. 

It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that income started to go up across the board for everyone. Growth rates increased at two percent annually since the 19th century and that led to GDP increases that were substantial and got us to where we are today. But for the better part of 1,000 years, no one made any great financial strides. 

3. 10% of Pablo Escobar’s Annual Income Was Lost to Rats 

How do you feel about losing money? Have you ever reached into your pocket for a $20 bill and realized you dropped it? That can ruin your whole day. Now try to imagine life as famous drug lord Pablo Escobar.

According to Escobar’s brother, they had to write off about 10% of their annual income to losses from rats. Which is to say they had so much money, they had to just stick it wherever they could, and sometimes rats would come and literally eat it or maybe rain would destroy it. That’s 10% of their annual income. 

It already sounds terrible at 10%, because you can imagine 10% of your income. Let’s say you’re making $60,000 a year, can you afford to lose $6,000 to rats? Probably not. But Pablo Escobar was losing $2.1 billion per year to rats. That’s what 10% meant to him. And he didn’t even care because how could you when you had that much cash?

2. The Average Indie Musician Makes Just a Few Thousand Per Year

There’s something about indie rock that many people feel is more artistic or pure than commercial music. In fact, if an indie rock band gets signed to a label they will often be accused of selling out. No one likes to sell out, right? By that definition, however, to be an indie musician means you have to not be selling anything. You may not be surprised to learn that’s entirely true; the average indie musician makes pretty much no annual salary whatsoever.

In Canada, an indie musician makes an average of $7,200 per year which is as paltry as it sounds when you convert that to US dollars. In America, the median salary for an indie musician is almost $13,000 but most make under $6,000. To make even that much money you’re going to have to go on tour, sell merchandise, get a manager, and have several income streams at the same time. Indie rock is generally not the way to get rich. 

1. According to Research, Money Can Actually Buy Happiness

You’ve heard that money can’t buy happiness, maybe one of the most famous quotes in the world about money. But have you also thought that having more money would still make you happier than you are right now? Most people who don’t have a lot of money agree that more money to pay their bills, get rid of debts, afford the things they want, and so on would probably make their lives easier and therefore happier. Lucky for us, someone looked into all of this.

 It turns out that money can make you happy up to a point. That point is $75,000. Or maybe even $500,000. Researchers looked at the lives of people making various sums of money and found that happiness did increase up to $75,000 per year. After that there was no appreciable increase in happiness, it was just like you were accumulating more stuff but you felt the same about it.

That study was conducted in 2009. In 2023, a Nobel Prize-winning economist determined that $75,000 was not cutting the mustard anymore and true happiness could be found at half a million dollars. 

In 2019, US law enforcement arrested over 800,000 people for larceny/theft. This is separate from burglary. It’s safe to say that theft is a major crime in the US and it’s the crime with the third highest arrest rate after DUI and drug-related crimes. Knowing that will help give this list a little context as there are some staggering theft statistics in the world at large.

10. Millions of Pets Are Stolen Every Year

Some things are more desirable to thieves than others. Or at least it seems like they should be. Cash has to be the most tempting item for any thief. Then you have things like cars, electronics, sneakers, drugs, and so much more. It turns out that pets are pretty high on the list as well. People will absolutely steal your pet.

It’s hard to put precise numbers on pet theft since it’s also possible a pet ran away, got lost, and then someone adopted it thinking it was a stray. Or maybe the animal wandered off and came back and the owners thought it was stolen but returned. So stats are fuzzy, but in 2017 around 360,000 residents in the UK were convinced someone had stolen their cat. Of those, 55% got their cat back. 

In America the numbers can be fuzzy as well. The Humane Society merges stats for stolen and lost pets together. Their stats say 10 million pets are lost or stolen every year. The American Kennel Club has more refined numbers and estimates two million dogs were stolen from their owners in 2020. That number rose in subsequent years and was blamed on a rise in demand during the pandemic.

9. One Million Parking Cones are Stolen Every Year

Parking cones are a ubiquitous part of the driving experience. We see those orange cones on the side of the road constantly during construction or around worksites and accidents. Most of us probably don’t think twice about them, but someone sure does. One million traffic cones are stolen per year in America. 

If you’re struggling to figure out why anyone would steal a parking cone, you’ll be equally surprised to learn many towns have had to deal with this for years. It got so bad in Coventry, Connecticut that local authorities started begging thieves to bring them back. The town would set them out after storms to warn residents of downed trees and power lines and the next day almost all would be gone. 

In the UK, police have sometimes resorted to amnesty days where people who have taken cones can return them with no questions asked hoping to recoup losses. The cones can cost around $20 and it’s taxpayers who foot the bill. 

8. 10% of Employees Admit to Stealing Toilet Paper From Work

Have you ever stolen from work? If you said no, you’re in the minority. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, 75% of employees have stolen something from their work. But what does that mean? Are they stealing cash from the till? Fries from the fryer? Computers from the office?  Well, it’s a tough one to break down.

Aside from things of great value, small things are just as likely to be targeted. Maybe more so, because you might figure no one would miss something insignificant like toilet paper. In one survey, 61% of office workers admitted to stealing from work and one in 10 of them was stealing toilet paper. 

It’s not just office workers, of course. A hotel cleaner was caught with a garbage bag full of 66 toilet paper rolls he stole from his job in 2020. He claimed to be donating them to a friend who was out of work. 

In some contexts, stealing toilet paper makes a little more sense. Recall the early days of the pandemic when people were hoarding toilet paper and there were even fights over in stores. In 2020, police recovered a truck loaded with 18,000 pounds of stolen toilet paper. 

7. Thieves Once Stole $18 Million in Maple Syrup

One quart of organic Vermont maple syrup costs about $22 from Walmart. That’s a good amount of syrup, too. It should last a while, depending on your penchant for pancakes. So keep that in mind in relation to this story about a team of thieves in Canada who stole $18 million worth of maple syrup.

Between 2011 and 2012, a group of thieves worked together to make off with 9,600 barrels of maple syrup from a Quebec warehouse. Officials thought nearly $30 million had been stolen at first but a recount of missing barrels brought it down to that slim $18 million.

After the suspects were caught, authorities reclaimed around 70% of the stolen syrup but the rest was believed to have been sold to Americans. So over $5 million in purloined syrup found its way to US waffles. 

6. Up to 380,000 Guns are Stolen Every Year in America

In 2020 it was estimated that there were 433.9 million guns in America. That’s 1.3 guns for everyone in the country. With that many guns around you just know someone has to be stealing them, and they definitely are. There are up to 380,000 guns stolen from private owners every year in America. 

The ATF’s numbers show that, between 2017 and 2021, over one million guns were stolen. They also pointed out that these were reported thefts and there is no federal law requiring you to report a stolen gun and most states don’t have one, either. That means the true number of stolen guns is likely a lot higher.

Gun theft is not just a big city crime, either. The town of Jonesboro, Arkansas, with a population of under 80,000, had reported over 40 gun thefts in 2022 by April of that year. 

5. One in Five Americans Had Their Identity Stolen in 2021

By now most of us are aware of identity theft and that we need to be careful when sharing sensitive information, especially online. Less well known may be how prevalent identity theft is. In the year 2021, one in five Americans were the victim of identity theft. That cost people about $56 billion in losses. Around 33% of all Americans had experienced identity theft by the year 2018. 

In a global sense, Americans are definitely leading the pack, suffering identity theft at twice the global average. The research also showed a lot of this was because of poor habits relating to security. For instance, 44% of people who took part in the survey that produced these results didn’t have password-protected wi-fi at home.

Another alarming stat is that, in 2016, 11% of victims of identity theft didn’t want to file a police report, likely out of embarrassment. As these types of crimes have become more and more common, it’s a reasonable assumption that there are also higher numbers than being reported for this same reason. 

4. Porch Thieves Steal  260 Million Packages Per Year 

If you spend a lot of time online, you have no doubt heard of porch thieves. Videos of these thieves taken from Ring cameras and other home security have been around for years. These are thieves who see a package left on someone’s porch, something from Amazon or other kinds of package delivery, and will simply walk up and steal the box before the rightful owner gets home.

The reason there are so many videos of this kind of crime is because there’s just so much of this kind of crime. In 2021 alone it was estimated that 260 million packages were taken off of porches. In 2016 that worked out to 1.7 million packages being pinched from porches every single day. 

Security firm Safewise conducted a survey to determine San Francisco was the worst city in America for porch thefts. Over 75% of Americans have experienced porch theft and losses are up to $19.5 billion with average packages valued between $50 and $100.

3. Millions of Bicycles Are Stolen Every Year

In 2021 about 51 million Americans rode bikes. It’s even more popular in Europe where you can find enormous populations of cycling enthusiasts in major cities. It’s estimated 90% of the people in the Netherlands regularly cycle. As with anything that’s popular there are thieves waiting in the wings to ruin it for everyone. 

It’s estimated that around 4 million bicycles are stolen every year in Europe, many of them unreported. In the US, that number is around two million. The under-reporting of bike theft makes it hard to get concrete numbers, with at least once registry services estimating that only one in five thefts is ever reported.

2. $75 Million in Used Cooking Oil is Stolen Every Year

There’s an old saying that goes “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and that’s very true in the world of oil. Used cooking oil from restaurants was once considered nothing but a trash by-product from making french fries and chicken. Now it’s a huge business. 

Old cooking oil, which restaurants sometimes store outside in sealed barrels until it can be picked up, can be used for many purposes if it’s cleaned and recycled but the biggest one is biodiesel. It is just old oil and not that much different from the oil we already refine into gasoline. 

While gas prices have continued to rise over the years, biodiesel is actually even more expensive. In April 2023 a gallon of gasoline in America averaged $3.69 but the most expensive kind of biodiesel averaged $4.95 per gallon. If it can be made from buckets of trash behind fast food restaurants, you can see why some people might want to steal it. And steal it they do.

America produces over 2.5 billion gallons of used cooking oil every year.  About $75 million in used oil is stolen in the same time period. The whole industry was set up to be very tempting to thieves. Restaurants can’t legally just throw the stuff out, it has to be taken somewhere to be processed. There are laws requiring that a certain amount of biodiesel be used every year, too, so the demand continues to grow. 

1. Dairy Farmers Lose Up To $100 Million a Year in Milk Crate Thefts

How many milk crates have you seen in places that weren’t grocery stores in your life? Milk crates in basements, garages, backyards, wherever. Those plastic cubes are used the world over for storing and organizing people’s junks and, of course, for shipping milk. But most of those crates that don’t have milk in them are supposed to. They were never purchased; they were stolen, and the expense is part of the reason you pay as much as you do for milk. 

Dairy farmers pay for those crates and when they get stolen, new ones need to be purchased. Every year, dairy farmers lose up to $100 million in milk crate theft, a number which is hard to comprehend given what we’re talking about. 

The number of crates works out to between 20 to 25 million. Just try to imagine what people need with 25 million milk crates if they’re not in the dairy industry already. The problem had a bit of light shined on it back in 2021 when the Milk Crate Challenge became a thing on TikTok and people were sharing videos of themselves stacking precarious milk crate structures and trying to climb them. 

Each crate costs about $4 and they only end up at the grocery store to ship the milk. Stores are meant to return them so they can be reused but, obviously, that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Stand up comedy would be nothing today without comedians making observations about the differences between men and women. And it’s likely people have been drawing various conclusions about the difference between men and women since men and women first existed. Nowadays we can rely on more than just casual observation and look at science and stats to see just how different we really are. 

10. Men Sweat More, and Sooner, Than Women

Let’s say you have a man and a woman working out together. They’re both in shape, both putting in the same amount of effort, doing the same amount of work, and both working up a sweat. Who do you think is going to sweat more?

As it happens, men really do sweat more than women and that’s backed up by research. In fact, men will start sweating sooner than women and will sweat about twice as much overall. Women have to put in a lot more work to start sweating. 

In one study, men lost twice as much moisture from their foreheads, back, check, forearms and thighs during the course of a workout. And while they may sound like a boon for women, it actually indicates that men’s bodies tend to work more efficiently at staying cool when they’re working. Part of this is thanks to testosterone levels, which are believed to aid in sweat production. 

9. Men are Twice as Likely to Gamble as Women

Anyone can find themselves caught up in the thrill of a game of chance or a game of skill, especially when money is on the line. It’s hard to deny the thrill of gambling and winning. But people do tend to fail far more often than they succeed. So who’s most likely to get sucked into this dynamic?

Men tend to be more inclined than women to gamble by a significant margin. Study results have shown that men are around twice as likely to gamble as women. And among members of both sexes who gamble, 20.1% of men would qualify as “problem gamblers” while only 7.8% of female gamblers qualify. 

Another study has shown that it doesn’t take a lot to convince a man to make a risky financial decision, either. In fact, if a fortune teller gives a man a good fortune, that man is more likely to make a risky gamble as a result. 

8. Men Tend to Say I Love You Earlier Than Women

Have you ever seen a movie or TV, usually a comedy, in which a male character stumbles over trying to tell a woman he loves her? And he legitimately can’t form the word? This stems from some sort of belief that men have trouble admitting their feelings but research shows the exact opposite is true. In fact, men tend to profess their love as much as six weeks earlier than women, on average. 

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean men are more sensitive and loving than we at first thought. Other research has shown that men seem to prefer hearing from a woman that the woman loves them before they consummate their relationship sexually than after. It’s possible, therefore, that men jump the gun on saying I love you in the hopes that the woman will return the sentiment and sex can therefore occur sooner in a way that the man finds acceptable. 

7. Men Are 88.7% More Likely to Win a Darwin Award 

The Darwin Awards are one of the internet’s historical relics, dating back to 1993. The idea of the awards is to celebrate, after a fashion, people who have improved the human genome by “accidentally removing themselves from it.” In other words, people who died by what has been deemed a stupid accident. It’s a morbidly funny concept, and it’s been going strong for a very long time now. 

Some may be surprised to learn and others may be less surprised to learn that Darwin Award winners are overwhelmingly men. In fact, men make up 88.7% of all Darwin Award winners. This extends well beyond silly internet awards as well as explained by something called the “Male Idiot Theory.” Please don’t be offended, that’s the name someone else gave it.

Based on data related to mortality rates and info from hospital emergency rooms, men are just far more likely to be injured accidentally or playing sports. They also have worse automobile accidents and all of this together has built some observable evidence that men take more stupid risks than women regardless of culture and socioeconomic factors. 

Researchers actually poured over 20 years worth of Darwin Awards data to prove, legitimately, that men are more prone to doing stupid things than women. Selection And reporting bias likely affect the numbers to some degree, but that massive 88.7% difference is more than mildly significant. 

6. Women are Far More Likely to Live a Vegan Lifestyle

Women are more likely to be vegan and that’s a fact. At least one study found that only 24% of vegans are men. Another study bumped the number up to 37%, which is still clearly very low. There’s a good chance this comes, in part, from the way we have traditionally looked at meat. Meat is manly. It doesn’t need to make sense, it’s just the way it has always been presented to us. Men grill meat and eat steaks and burgers and so on. Women are often portrayed as being daintier and eating salads and so on. Maybe it’s all stereotyping and based on no real facts at all, but numbers don’t lie.

Psychologists have observed that men are often fearful of appearing to do anything that isn’t masculine. And they will even amp up their perceived manliness in the aftermath of performing a task considered feminine. In the face of a complete lifestyle overhaul, such as going vegan, this is a stumbling block for manly men. This includes for health reasons or moral reasons.

5. Men and Women Often Lie for Different Reasons

Here’s a tough one for you. Who do you think is more honest and trustworthy overall, men or women? The answer is… not that easy, either. Everyone can be deceitful, but the reasons why men and women are deceitful may be surprising. 

Research has shown that men tend to lie more often for their own benefit while women are more likely to lie for someone else’s. A man will be more likely to tell a lie that makes himself look better. He may lie about his height to seem taller, how strong he is to seem tough, how much money he makes to seem richer. In contrast, women lie about those same types of things but for the opposite reasons. They’ll lie about their age to seem younger, their weight to seem slimmer, and their sexual partners to seem less experienced. So men lie to boost and women lie to minimize.

Some studies show women are more likely to lie, as much as twice as likely, in fact, as men. But the lies they tell are to be nice. That means to spare someone’s feelings or make them feel better. They will also lie to help boost someone, such as if they have to advocate for someone else in some way, while men tend to not go out on a limb for another person in that way. 

4. Men are Far More Likely to Get Skin Cancer Than Women

There’s a common stereotype that men are a little more stubborn about their own health than women. They will do less to care for themselves and the evidence seems to back this up, especially in terms of skin cancer rates. By the time they reach age 80, men are three times as likely to get skin cancer as women are. White men over 55 are the most likely to be diagnosed with melanoma in America compared to any other group. 

A major part of this discrepancy is that women, by and large, do far more for their own skin care than men. This includes makeup and moisturizers that have an SPF. Only 14% of men wear sunscreen when they go out. A large number of men are unaware of the dangers of the sun as well. Only 56% of men surveyed knew that there is no such thing as a healthy tan compared to 76% of women. 

Part of the problem here is that sunscreen is marketed very specifically to women. The imagery and language use is very explicitly directed at women and this harkens back to what we know about veganism already. Men don’t want to be perceived as being less than manly and will avoid things considered feminine, even if it literally kills them. 

3. Men are Much More Likely to Be Struck by Lightning Than Women

There’s a good chance you never worry about being hit by lightning because why would you? The CDC says you have less than a one in a million chance of being hit in any given year. That said, your odds do increase if you’re a man. You’re four times as likely to be struck, in fact, compared to women.

Between 2006 and 2016, there were 352 people who were struck and killed by lightning. Of those, 79% of the victims were men. The reason men are the more common victims could be accounted for when you factor in what most of the victims are doing. About 90% of the male victims were fishing or playing sports, meaning they were outside and likely holding something that essentially worked as a lightning rod. The lesson here is that, if a storm rolls in, drop the rod or the golf clubs for your own safety. 

2. Men Fart Much More Often Than Women

No doubt the one question that has plagued you for years is who farts more, men or women? Well, science has your answers so you can rest easy. You may have long speculated that men were the gassier sex, and you were right. Men are actually working them out almost twice as often as women. This has been studied by real scientists. 

When 60 men and 60 women were tasked with tracking their gas, men had an average of 12.7 farts per day. The women only clocked in with an average of 7.1. One man pulled off a whopping 53 in a day. The leading woman tapped out at 32.

Obviously diet will have the greatest effect on this and it’s not consistent from one day to another, but the general conclusion still stands. Men are just a little windier than women. 

1. Far More Men Than Women Don’t Wash Their Hands After Using a Bathroom

Of all the differences between men and women, few are likely to make you feel as uncomfortable as this one. We’re looking at bathroom habits and what we’re seeing isn’t good. A full 15% of men do not wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Of the remaining 85% who do wash their hands, only 50% use soap. 

On the flip side, 7% of women are disinclined to clean up after using the restroom, and 78% will use soap out of those who do. More off putting is that only 5% of all participants washed their hands long enough to kill the kinds of germs that can make you sick. This is based on results from 3,749 participants. 

Now maybe that was just one study that had curious results. What does the CDC say? According to them, 69% of men won’t wash their hands after using a public bathroom, compared to 35% of women.

Both of these studies are getting pretty old at this point, the first from 2013 and the second from 2009. Perhaps after Covid people’s habits have changed but for now, you may want to assume any hands you shake aren’t as clean as they could be.