Americans appear to be increasingly seduced by the allure of plastic surgery and life by the beach, and are proving unable to shrug off the habit of overeating despite a massive health drive against obesity, the latest US census abstract suggests.
The 2009 Statistical Abstract of the United States shows that the amount of cosmetic remodelling rose from 8.5m procedures in 2001 to 11.7m in 2007.
Most of the work was nonsurgical, with Botox injections the most popular, totaling 2.8m procedures in 2007. Also popular are hyaluronan injections, approved by US regulators in 2003, which are used to fill out facial wrinkles.
Of the 2.1m surgical procedures in 2007, liposuction (457,000) and breast enlargement (399,000) topped the table.
Men accounted for about a million of the procedures that year, with Botox and liposuction leading the way.
The report provides a treasure trove of information about the US during a period of considerable demographic and political flux. This year’s edition contains more than 1,400 tables, with data drawn from the census bureau and an array of social, political and economic groups.
At a time when the US is experiencing destructive weather patterns and the prospect of rising sea levels from global warming, many Americans continue to migrate with abandon towards the beach.
Eight million more people lived along the US coastline in 2007 than in 2000. The growth is particularly pronounced in the two regions most threatened by hurricanes and flooding, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. Florida saw a 13% increase in the number of people living along its coasts over seven years, rising to 10.6 million, almost 60% of the state population.
The coastal population of the Gulf of Mexico increased to almost 20 million. Despite the devastation caused by Katrina in 2005, Louisiana’s number remained remarkably stable at 3.3 million, down by less than 200,000.
Texas also continues to expose itself to the vicissitudes of extreme weather. The number of people living by the sea rose 15% from 2000-2007 to 7.9 million.
US authorities have spent millions of dollars in recent years trying to combat obesity. They need to try harder, according to the abstract, whose figures on weight are up to 2006. It shows that a third of Americans are clinically obese, with a body mass index of 30 or more. Of particular concern to health professionals will be that 30% of 18- to 44-year-olds are obese.
Part of the cause is revealed in other tables that show that a quarter of the population is physically inactive, having reported doing no exercise in the previous month from the date of the survey.
For the first time the abstract shows the religious composition of the US. America remains overwhelmingly Christian, with 51% describing themselves as Baptist and 24% as Catholic.
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