| Introduction | 1 |
| The average Japanese woman can expect to live to be 84. The average Botswanan will reach just 39 | 3 |
| A third of the world's obese people live in the developing world | 9 |
| The US and Britain have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world | 15 |
| China has 44 million missing women | 21 |
| Brazil has more Avon ladies than members of its amed services | 27 |
| Eighty-one per cent of the world's executions in 2002 took place in just three countries: China, Iran and the USA | 33 |
| British supermarkets know more about their customers than the British government does | 41 |
| Every cow in the European Union is subsidised by $2.50 a day. That's more than what 75 per cent of Africans have to live on | 47 |
| In more than 70 countries, same-sex relationships are illegal. In nine countries, the penalty is death | 53 |
| One in five of the world's people lives on less than $1 a day | 59 |
| More than 12,000 women are killed each year in Russia as a result of domestic violence | 65 |
| In 2001, 13.2 million Americans had some form of plastic surgery | 71 |
| Landmines kill or maim at least one person every hour | 77 |
| There are 44 million child labourers in India | 83 |
| People in industrialised countries eat between 13 and 15 pounds of food additives every year | 89 |
| The golfer Tiger Woods is the world's highest-paid sportsman. He earns $78 million a year - or $148 every second | 95 |
| Seven million American women and 1 million American men suffer from an eating disorder | 101 |
| Nearly half of British fifteen-year-olds have tried illegal drugs and nearly a quarter are regular cigarette smokers | 107 |
| There are 67,000 people employed in the lobbying industry in Washington DC - 125 for each elected member of Congress | 113 |
| Cars kill two people every minute | 119 |
| Since 1977, there have been nearly 80,000 acts of violence or disruption at abortion clinics in North America | 125 |
| More people can identify the golden arches of McDonald's than the Christian cross | 131 |
| In Kenya, bribery payments make up a third of the average household budget | 137 |
| The world's trade in illegal drugs is estimated to be worth around $400 billion - about the same as the world's legal pharmaceutical industry | 143 |
| Nearly half of Americans believe aliens have landed on Earth | 149 |
| More than 150 countries use torture | 155 |
| Every day, one in five of the world's population - some 800 million people - go hungry | 161 |
| Black men born in the US today stand a one in three chance of going to jail | 167 |
| A third of the world's population is at war | 173 |
| The world's oil reserves could be exhausted by 2040 | 179 |
| Eighty-two per cent of the world's smokers live in developing countries | 185 |
| More than 70 per cent of the world's population have never heard a dial tone | 191 |
| A quarter of the world's armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources | 197 |
| Some 30 million people in Africa are HIV-positive | 203 |
| Ten languages die out every year | 209 |
| More people die each year from suicide than in all the world's armed conflicts | 215 |
| Every week, an average of 88 children are expelled from American schools for bringing a gun to class | 221 |
| There are at least 300,000 prisoners of conscience in the world | 227 |
| Two million girls and women are subjected to female genital mutilation each year | 233 |
| There are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world | 239 |
| Nearly 26 million people voted in the 2001 British General Election. More than 32 million votes were cast in the first season of Pop Idol | 245 |
| America spends $10 billion on pornography every year - the same amount it spends on foreign aid | 251 |
| In 2003, the US spent $396 billion on its military. This is 33 times the combined military spending of the seven 'rogue states' | 257 |
| There are 27 million slaves in the world today | 263 |
| Americans discard 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. That's enough bottles to reach all the way to the moon every three weeks | 269 |
| The average urban Briton is caught on camera up to 300 times a day | 275 |
| Some 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into Western Europe every year | 281 |
| A kiwi fruit flown from New Zealand to Britain emits five times its own weight in greenhouse gases | 287 |
| The US owes the United Nations more than $1 billion in unpaid dues | 293 |
| Children living in poverty are three times more likely to suffer a mental illness than children from wealthy families | 299 |
| Sources for the 50 facts | 304 |
| Notes | 308 |
| Glossary | 330 |
| Getting involved | 333 |
| Index | 338 |
