Lake County Demographic of the Day: Lots of Vets!

This interesting statistic just happened to pop out of MDL yesterday: 1600 military veterans (including my dad and my good neighbor Gerry Lange) live in Lake County. Out of a total county population of 11,170, that's over 14% of the people here. Statewide, 72,000 vets make up 9.5% of our 754K population. Nationwide, 23.5 million vets make up just 7.8% of the United States' current 302 million population.

Obviously Lake County has a surprisingly strong military tradition. I can't guarantee we have the highest per capita concentration of veterans in the country -- interestingly, a simple Google search of "veterans per capita" turns up eight states in just the first 50 results claiming to have the highest percentage of vets in their populations (Alaska and West Virginia appear to lead the citations race; NM, NJ, MT, SC, NH, and OK also get mentions).

Funny -- Google "poets per capita," and you only get a smattering of results (among US states, only Iowa pops up with a suggestion that it might have the most poets per capita; the only other places making such a claim are the farther-flung locales of Canada, Nicaragua, and Hungary).

Readers are welcome to draw their own musings and conclusions from this data on vets in Lake County. Heck, with this weekend's big snowstorm coming, maybe you too can hunker down and Google some interesting statistical arcana about our your own county!