Almanac bursting with Utah trivia

SALT LAKE CITY — More Utah college students stay in-state for school than do any other state's residents. Utah has the nation's second-highest rate of Internet usage. It has the nation's second-lowest death rate, and the highest birth rate. And Utah has the highest percentage of any state's residents who report to be Christian.

That is among the trivia in the new 2010 Statistical Abstract of the United States, also known as Uncle Sam's Almanac, which was released Tuesday. The 129th annual edition of the government's best-selling reference book contains more than 1,400 tables of social, political and economic facts gleaned by federal and other agencies.

The mounds of data (available at census.gov) give glimpses of where Utah and institutions important to it rank compared to others. Following are some examples:

RELIGION: 74.3 percent of Utahns are Christian adherents, the most of any state and much higher than the national average of 47.4 percent, the book reports.

Also, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Utah, is the fourth-largest individual church denomination in America with a 2007 U.S. membership of 5.9 million. It trails the Roman Catholic Church (67.1 million), the Southern Baptist Church (16.3 million) and the United Methodist Church (7.9 million).

CLEAN LIVING: Probably because of the LDS influence, Utah has the nation's lowest rate of cigarette smokers — 11.7 percent of adults age 18 and older. The national average is 19.8 percent.

Utah also has the second-lowest rate of illicit drug use in the nation. About 6.4 percent of adults used them in the two-year period of 2006-07, second lowest only to Iowa's 5.2 percent.

Utah also had the nation's lowest birth rate to unmarried mothers, 19.6 percent of all births in 2008. Nationally, 39.7 percent of all births were to unmarried women.

Utah also tied with South Dakota for having the nation's lowest abortion rate in 2005 (the latest year for which data was available), 6.4 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.

READ ABOUT IT (ONLINE): About 82 percent of Utahns age 16 and older used the Internet in 2007, second highest in the nation behind Alaska (84.3 percent). And 69.5 percent of them had access to it at home (instead of just at work or school). Also, 59.3 percent of Utahns had high-speed broadband connections at home, while 10 percent used dial-up services at home.

Utah's libraries are not just for books, and each branch has an average of 12.8 computers offering public Internet access.