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There were 230,233 households, 29.4% of which had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.4% were married couples living together, 13.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.4% were non-families. One person households account for 30.5% of all households and 8.7% of all households had someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the average family size was 3.11.
In the 2000 Census Oklahoma City's age composition was 25.5% under the age of 18, 10.7% from 18 to 24, 30.8% from 25 to 44, 21.5% from 45 to 64, and 11.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 95.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 92.7 males.
Oklahoma City has experienced significant population increases since the late 1990s. In May 2014, the U.S. Census announced Oklahoma City had an estimated population of 620,602 in 2014 and that it had grown 5.3 percent between April 2010 and June 2013. Since the official Census in 2000, Oklahoma City had grown 21 percent (a 114,470 raw increase) according to the Bureau estimates. The 2014 estimate of 620,602 is the largest population Oklahoma City has ever recorded. It is the first city in the state to record a population greater than 600,000 residents and the largest municipal population of the Great Plains region (OK, KS, NE, SD, ND).
Oklahoma City is the principal city of the eight-county Oklahoma City Metropolitan Statistical Area in Central Oklahoma and is the state's largest urbanized area. Based on population rank, the metropolitan area was the 42nd largest in the nation as of 2012.
With regards to Mexican drug cartels, Oklahoma City has traditionally been the territory of the notorious Juárez Cartel, but the Sinaloa Cartel has been reported as trying to establish a foothold in Oklahoma City. There are many rival gangs in Oklahoma City, one whose headquarters has been established in the city, the Southside Locos, traditionally known as Sureños.
Oklahoma City also has its share of very brutal crimes, particularly in the 1970s. The worst of which occurred in 1978, when six employees of a Sirloin Stockade restaurant on the city's south side were murdered execution-style in the restaurant's freezer. An intensive investigation followed, and the three individuals involved, who also killed three others in Purcell, Oklahoma, were identified. One, Harold Stafford, died in a motorcycle accident in Tulsa not long after the restaurant murders. Another, Verna Stafford, was sentenced to life without parole after being granted a new trial after she had previously been sentenced to death. Roger Dale Stafford, considered the mastermind of the murder spree, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1995.
The Oklahoma City Police Department, has a uniformed force of 1,169 officers and 300+ civilian employees. The Department has a central police station and five substations covering 2,500 police reporting districts that average 1/4 square mile in size.
On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was destroyed by a fertilizer bomb manufactured and detonated by Timothy McVeigh. The blast and catastrophic collapse killed 168 people and injured over 680. The blast shockwave destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 340-meter radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, causing at least an estimated $652 million worth of damage. The main suspect- Timothy McVeigh, was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. It was the deadliest single domestic terrorist attack in US history, prior to 9/11.
While not in Oklahoma City proper, other large employers within the MSA region include: Tinker Air Force Base (27,000); University of Oklahoma (11,900); University of Central Oklahoma (2,900); and Norman Regional Hospital (2,800).
According to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, the metropolitan area's economic output grew by 33 percent between 2001 and 2005 due chiefly to economic diversification. Its gross metropolitan product was $43.1 billion in 2005 and grew to $61.1 billion in 2009.
In 2008, Forbes magazine named Oklahoma City the most "recession proof city in America". The magazine reported that the city had falling unemployment, one of the strongest housing markets in the country and solid growth in energy, agriculture and manufacturing. However, during the early 1980s, Oklahoma City had one of the worst job and housing markets due to the bankruptcy of Penn Square Bank in 1982 and then the post-1985 crash in oil prices.[citation needed]
Other theaters include Lyric Theatre, Jewel Box Theatre, Kirkpatrick Auditorium, the Poteet Theatre, the Oklahoma City Community College Bruce Owen Theater and the 488-seat Petree Recital Hall, at the Oklahoma City University campus. The university also opened the Wanda L Bass School of Music and auditorium in April 2006.
The Science Museum Oklahoma (formerly Kirkpatrick Science and Air Space Museum at Omniplex) houses exhibits on science, aviation, and an IMAX theater. The museum formerly housed the International Photography Hall of Fame (IPHF) that exhibits photographs and artifacts from a large collection of cameras and other artifacts preserving the history of photography. IPHF honors those who have made significant contributions to the art and/or science of photography and relocated to St. Louis, Missouri in 2013.
The Museum of Osteology houses more than 300 real animal skeletons. Focusing on the form and function of the skeletal system, this 7,000 sq ft (650 m2) museum displays hundreds of skulls and skeletons from all corners of the world. Exhibits include adaptation, locomotion, classification and diversity of the vertebrate kingdom. The Museum of Osteology is the only one of its kind in America.
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum has galleries of western art and is home to the Hall of Great Western Performers. In contrast, the city will also be home to The American Indian Cultural Center and Museum that began construction in 2009 (although completion of the facility has been held up due to insufficient funding), on the south side of Interstate 40, southeast from Bricktown.
The Oklahoma City National Memorial in the northern part of Oklahoma City's downtown was created as the inscription on its eastern gate of the Memorial reads, "to honor the victims, survivors, rescuers, and all who were changed forever on April 19, 1995"; the memorial was built on the land formerly occupied by the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building complex prior to its 1995 bombing. The outdoor Symbolic Memorial can be visited 24 hours a day for free, and the adjacent Memorial Museum, located in the former Journal Record building damaged by the bombing, can be entered for a small fee. The site is also home to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a non-partisan, nonprofit think tank devoted to the prevention of terrorism.
The American Banjo Museum located in the Bricktown Entertainment district is dedicated to preserving and promoting the music and heritage of America's native musical instrument – the banjo. With a collection valued at $3.5 million it is truly a national treasure. An interpretive exhibits tells the evolution of the banjo from its humble roots in American slavery, to bluegrass, to folk and world music.
The Oklahoma History Center is the history museum of the state of Oklahoma. Located across the street from the governor's mansion at 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive in northeast Oklahoma City, the museum opened in 2005 and is operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society. It preserves the history of Oklahoma from the prehistoric to the present day.
Oklahoma City is home to several professional sports teams, including the Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association. The Thunder is the city's second "permanent" major professional sports franchise after the now-defunct AFL Oklahoma Wranglers and is the third major-league team to call the city home when considering the temporary hosting of the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets for the 2005–06 and 2006–07 NBA seasons.
Other professional sports clubs in Oklahoma City include the Oklahoma City Dodgers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Oklahoma City Energy FC of the United Soccer League, and the Crusaders of Oklahoma Rugby Football Club USA Rugby.
Chesapeake Energy Arena in downtown is the principal multipurpose arena in the city which hosts concerts, NHL exhibition games, and many of the city's pro sports teams. In 2008, the Oklahoma City Thunder became the major tenant. Located nearby in Bricktown, the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark is the home to the city's baseball team, the Dodgers. "The Brick", as it is locally known, is considered one of the finest minor league parks in the nation.[citation needed]
Oklahoma City is the annual host of the Big 12 Baseball Tournament, the World Cup of Softball, and the annual NCAA Women's College World Series. The city has held the 2005 NCAA Men's Basketball First and Second round and hosted the Big 12 Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments in 2007 and 2009. The major universities in the area – University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City University, and Oklahoma State University – often schedule major basketball games and other sporting events at Chesapeake Energy Arena and Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, although most home games are played at their campus stadiums.
Other major sporting events include Thoroughbred and Quarter horse racing circuits at Remington Park and numerous horse shows and equine events that take place at the state fairgrounds each year. There are numerous golf courses and country clubs spread around the city.
The state of Oklahoma hosts a highly competitive high school football culture, with many teams in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. The Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) organizes high school football into eight distinct classes based on the size of school enrollment. Beginning with the largest, the classes are: 6A, 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A, A, B, and C. Class 6A is broken into two divisions. Oklahoma City area schools in this division include: Edmond North, Mustang, Moore, Yukon, Edmond Memorial, Edmond Santa Fe, Norman North, Westmoore, Southmoore, Putnam City North, Norman, Putnam City, Putnam City West, U.S. Grant, Midwest City.
The Oklahoma City Thunder of the National Basketball Association (NBA) has called Oklahoma City home since the 2008–09 season, when owner Clayton Bennett relocated the franchise from Seattle, Washington. The Thunder plays home games at the Chesapeake Energy Arena in downtown Oklahoma City, known affectionately in the national media as 'the Peake' and 'Loud City'. The Thunder is known by several nicknames, including "OKC Thunder" and simply "OKC", and its mascot is Rumble the Bison.
After a lackluster arrival to Oklahoma City for the 2008–09 season, the Oklahoma City Thunder secured a berth (8th) in the 2010 NBA Playoffs the next year after boasting its first 50-win season, winning two games in the first round against the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2012, Oklahoma City made it to the NBA Finals, but lost to the Miami Heat in five games. In 2013 the Thunder reached the Western Conference semifinals without All-Star guard Russell Westbrook, who was injured in their first round series against the Houston Rockets, only to lose to the Memphis Grizzlies. In 2014 Oklahoma City again reached the NBA's Western Conference Finals but eventually lost to the San Antonio Spurs in six games.
The Oklahoma City Thunder has been regarded by sports analysts as one of the elite franchises of the NBA's Western Conference and that of a media darling as the future of the league. Oklahoma City has earned Northwest Division titles every year since 2009 and has consistently improved its win record to 59-wins in 2014. The Thunder is led by first year head coach Billy Donovan and is anchored by several NBA superstars, including perennial All-Star point guard Russell Westbrook, 2014 MVP and four-time NBA scoring champion Kevin Durant, and Defensive Player of the Year nominee and shot-blocker Serge Ibaka.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the NBA's New Orleans Hornets (now the New Orleans Pelicans) temporarily relocated to the Ford Center, playing the majority of its home games there during the 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons. The team became the first NBA franchise to play regular-season games in the state of Oklahoma.[citation needed] The team was known as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets while playing in Oklahoma City. The team ultimately returned to New Orleans full-time for the 2007–08 season. The Hornets played their final home game in Oklahoma City during the exhibition season on October 9, 2007 against the Houston Rockets.
One of the more prominent landmarks downtown is the Crystal Bridge at the Myriad Botanical Gardens, a large downtown urban park. Designed by I. M. Pei, the Crystal Bridge is a tropical conservatory in the area. The park has an amphitheater, known as the Water Stage. In 2007, following a renovation of the stage, Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park relocated to the Myriad Gardens. The Myriad Gardens will undergo a massive renovation in conjunction with the recently built Devon Tower directly north of it.
The Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Garden is home to numerous natural habitats, WPA era architecture and landscaping, and hosts major touring concerts during the summer at its amphitheater. Oklahoma City also has two amusement parks, Frontier City theme park and White Water Bay water park. Frontier City is an 'Old West'-themed amusement park. The park also features a recreation of a western gunfight at the 'OK Corral' and many shops that line the "Western" town's main street. Frontier City also hosts a national concert circuit at its amphitheater during the summer. Oklahoma City also has a combination racetrack and casino open year-round, Remington Park, which hosts both Quarter horse (March – June) and Thoroughbred (August – December) seasons.
Walking trails line Lake Hefner and Lake Overholser in the northwest part of the city and downtown at the canal and the Oklahoma River. The majority of the east shore area is taken up by parks and trails, including a new leashless dog park and the postwar-era Stars and Stripes Park. Lake Stanley Draper is the city's largest and most remote lake.
Oklahoma City has a major park in each quadrant of the city, going back to the first parks masterplan. Will Rogers Park, Lincoln Park, Trosper Park, and Woodson Park were once connected by the Grand Boulevard loop, some sections of which no longer exist. Martin Park Nature Center is a natural habitat in far northwest Oklahoma City. Will Rogers Park is home to the Lycan Conservatory, the Rose Garden, and Butterfly Garden, all built in the WPA era. Oklahoma City is home to the American Banjo Museum, which houses a large collection of highly decorated banjos from the early 20th century and exhibits on the history of the banjo and its place in American history. Concerts and lectures are also held there.
In April 2005, the Oklahoma City Skate Park at Wiley Post Park was renamed the Mat Hoffman Action Sports Park to recognize Mat Hoffman, an Oklahoma City area resident and businessman that was instrumental in the design of the skate park and is a 10-time BMX World Vert champion. In March 2009, the Mat Hoffman Action Sports Park was named by the National Geographic Society Travel Guide as one of the "Ten Best."
The City of Oklahoma City has operated under a council-manager form of city government since 1927. Mick Cornett serves as Mayor, having first been elected in 2004, and re-elected in 2006, 2010, and 2014. Eight councilpersons represent each of the eight wards of Oklahoma City. City Manager Jim Couch was appointed in late 2000. Couch previously served as assistant city manager, Metropolitan Area Projects Plan (MAPS) director and utilities director prior to his service as city manager.
The city is home to several colleges and universities. Oklahoma City University, formerly known as Epworth University, was founded by the United Methodist Church on September 1, 1904 and is renowned for its performing arts, science, mass communications, business, law, and athletic programs. OCU has its main campus in the north-central section of the city, near the city's chinatown area. OCU Law is located in the Midtown district near downtown, in the old Central High School building.
The University of Oklahoma has several institutions of higher learning in the city and metropolitan area, with OU Medicine and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center campuses located east of downtown in the Oklahoma Health Center district, and the main campus located to the south in the suburb of Norman. The OU Medicine hosting the state's only Level-One trauma center. OU Health Sciences Center is one of the nation's largest independent medical centers, employing more than 12,000 people. OU is one of only four major universities in the nation to operate six medical schools.[clarification needed]
The third-largest university in the state, the University of Central Oklahoma, is located just north of the city in the suburb of Edmond. Oklahoma Christian University, one of the state's private liberal arts institutions, is located just south of the Edmond border, inside the Oklahoma City limits.
Oklahoma City Community College in south Oklahoma City is the second-largest community college in the state. Rose State College is located east of Oklahoma City in suburban Midwest City. Oklahoma State University–Oklahoma City is located in the "Furniture District" on the Westside. Northeast of the city is Langston University, the state's historically black college (HBCU). Langston also has an urban campus in the eastside section of the city. Southern Nazarene University, which was founded by the Church of the Nazarene, is a university located in suburban Bethany, which is surrounded by the Oklahoma City city limits.
Although technically not a university, the FAA's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center has many aspects of an institution of higher learning. Its FAA Academy is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Its Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI) has a medical education division responsible for aeromedical education in general as well as the education of aviation medical examiners in the U.S. and 93 other countries. In addition, The National Academy of Science offers Research Associateship Programs for fellowship and other grants for CAMI research.
Oklahoma City is home to the state's largest school district, Oklahoma City Public Schools. The district's Classen School of Advanced Studies and Harding Charter Preparatory High School rank high among public schools nationally according to a formula that looks at the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by the school's students divided by the number of graduating seniors. In addition, OKCPS's Belle Isle Enterprise Middle School was named the top middle school in the state according to the Academic Performance Index, and recently received the Blue Ribbon School Award, in 2004 and again in 2011. KIPP Reach College Preparatory School in Oklahoma City received the 2012 National Blue Ribbon along with its school leader, Tracy McDaniel Sr., being awarded the Terrel H. Bell Award for Outstanding Leadership.
The Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, a school for some of the state's most gifted math and science pupils, is also located in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma City has several public career and technology education schools associated with the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education, the largest of which are Metro Technology Center and Francis Tuttle Technology Center.
Private career and technology education schools in Oklahoma City include Oklahoma Technology Institute, Platt College, Vatterott College, and Heritage College. The Dale Rogers Training Center in Oklahoma City is a nonprofit vocational training center for individuals with disabilities.
The Oklahoman is Oklahoma City's major daily newspaper and is the most widely circulated in the state. NewsOK.com is the Oklahoman's online presence. Oklahoma Gazette is Oklahoma City's independent newsweekly, featuring such staples as local commentary, feature stories, restaurant reviews and movie listings and music and entertainment. The Journal Record is the city's daily business newspaper and okcBIZ is a monthly publication that covers business news affecting those who live and work in Central Oklahoma.
There are numerous community and international newspapers locally that cater to the city's ethnic mosaic; such as The Black Chronicle, headquartered in the Eastside, the OK VIETIMES and Oklahoma Chinese Times, located in Asia District, and various Hispanic community publications. The Campus is the student newspaper at Oklahoma City University. Gay publications include The Gayly Oklahoman.
An upscale lifestyle publication called Slice Magazine is circulated throughout the metropolitan area. In addition, there is a magazine published by Back40 Design Group called The Edmond Outlook. It contains local commentary and human interest pieces direct-mailed to over 50,000 Edmond residents.
Oklahoma City was home to several pioneers in radio and television broadcasting. Oklahoma City's WKY Radio was the first radio station transmitting west of the Mississippi River and the third radio station in the United States. WKY received its federal license in 1921 and has continually broadcast under the same call letters since 1922. In 1928, WKY was purchased by E.K. Gaylord's Oklahoma Publishing Company and affiliated with the NBC Red Network; in 1949, WKY-TV (channel 4) went on the air and later became the first independently owned television station in the U.S. to broadcast in color. In mid-2002, WKY radio was purchased outright by Citadel Broadcasting, who was bought out by Cumulus Broadcasting in 2011. The Gaylord family earlier sold WKY-TV in 1976, which has gone through a succession of owners (what is now KFOR-TV is currently owned by Tribune Broadcasting as of December 2013).
The major U.S. broadcast television networks have affiliates in the Oklahoma City market (ranked 41st for television by Nielsen and 48th for radio by Arbitron, covering a 34-county area serving the central, northern-central and west-central sections Oklahoma); including NBC affiliate KFOR-TV (channel 4), ABC affiliate KOCO-TV (channel 5), CBS affiliate KWTV-DT (channel 9, the flagship of locally based Griffin Communications), PBS station KETA-TV (channel 13, the flagship of the state-run OETA member network), Fox affiliate KOKH-TV (channel 25), CW affiliate KOCB (channel 34), independent station KAUT-TV (channel 43), MyNetworkTV affiliate KSBI-TV (channel 52), and Ion Television owned-and-operated station KOPX-TV (channel 62). The market is also home to several religious stations including TBN owned-and-operated station KTBO-TV (channel 14) and Norman-based Daystar owned-and-operated station KOCM (channel 46).
Oklahoma City is protected by the Oklahoma City Fire Department (OKCFD), which employs 1015 paid, professional firefighters. The current Chief of Department is G. Keith Bryant, the department is also commanded by three Deputy Chiefs, who – along with the department chief – oversee the Operational Services, Prevention Services, and Support Services bureaus. The OKCFD currently operates out of 37 fire stations, located throughout the city in six battalions. The OKCFD also operates a fire apparatus fleet of 36 engines (including 30 paramedic engines), 13 ladders, 16 brush patrol units, six water tankers, two hazardous materials units, one Technical Rescue Unit, one Air Supply Unit, six Arson Investigation Units, and one Rehabilitation Unit. Each engine is staffed with a driver, an officer, and one to two firefighters, while each ladder company is staffed with a driver, an officer, and one firefighter. Minimum staffing per shift is 213 personnel. The Oklahoma City Fire Department responds to over 70,000 emergency calls annually.
Oklahoma City is an integral point on the United States Interstate Network, with three major interstate highways – Interstate 35, Interstate 40, and Interstate 44 – bisecting the city. Interstate 240 connects Interstate 40 and Interstate 44 in south Oklahoma City, while Interstate 235 spurs from Interstate 44 in north-central Oklahoma City into downtown.
Major state expressways through the city include Lake Hefner Parkway (SH-74), the Kilpatrick Turnpike, Airport Road (SH-152), and Broadway Extension (US-77) which continues from I-235 connecting Central Oklahoma City to Edmond. Lake Hefner Parkway runs through northwest Oklahoma City, while Airport Road runs through southwest Oklahoma City and leads to Will Rogers World Airport. The Kilpatrick Turnpike loops around north and west Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma City also has several major national and state highways within its city limits. Shields Boulevard (US-77) continues from E.K. Gaylord Boulevard in downtown Oklahoma City and runs south eventually connecting to I-35 near the suburb of Moore. Northwest Expressway (Oklahoma State Highway 3) runs from North Classen Boulevard in north-central Oklahoma City to the northwestern suburbs.
Oklahoma City is served by two primary airports, Will Rogers World Airport and the much smaller Wiley Post Airport (incidentally, the two honorees died in the same plane crash in Alaska) Will Rogers World Airport is the state's busiest commercial airport, with over 3.6 million passengers annually. Tinker Air Force Base, in southeast Oklahoma City, is the largest military air depot in the nation; a major maintenance and deployment facility for the Navy and the Air Force, and the second largest military institution in the state (after Fort Sill in Lawton).
METRO Transit is the city's public transit company. The main transfer terminal is located downtown at NW 5th Street and Hudson Avenue. METRO Transit maintains limited coverage of the city's main street grid using a hub-and-spoke system from the main terminal, making many journeys impractical due to the rather small number of bus routes offered and that most trips require a transfer downtown. The city has recognized that transit as a major issue for the rapidly growing and urbanizing city and has initiated several studies in recent times to improve upon the existing bus system starting with a plan known as the Fixed Guideway Study. This study identified several potential commuter transit routes from the suburbs into downtown OKC as well as feeder-line bus and/or rail routes throughout the city.
On December 2009, Oklahoma City voters passed MAPS 3, the $777 million (7-year 1-cent tax) initiative, which will include funding (appx $130M) for an estimated 5-to-6-mile (8.0 to 9.7 km) modern streetcar in downtown Oklahoma City and the establishment of a transit hub. It is believed the streetcar would begin construction in 2014 and be in operation around 2017.
Oklahoma City and the surrounding metropolitan area are home to a number of health care facilities and specialty hospitals. In Oklahoma City's MidTown district near downtown resides the state's oldest and largest single site hospital, St. Anthony Hospital and Physicians Medical Center.
OU Medicine, an academic medical institution located on the campus of The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, is home to OU Medical Center. OU Medicine operates Oklahoma's only level-one trauma center at the OU Medical Center and the state's only level-one trauma center for children at Children's Hospital at OU Medicine, both of which are located in the Oklahoma Health Center district. Other medical facilities operated by OU Medicine include OU Physicians and OU Children's Physicians, the OU College of Medicine, the Oklahoma Cancer Center and OU Medical Center Edmond, the latter being located in the northern suburb of Edmond.
INTEGRIS Health owns several hospitals, including INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center, the INTEGRIS Cancer Institute of Oklahoma, and the INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center. INTEGRIS Health operates hospitals, rehabilitation centers, physician clinics, mental health facilities, independent living centers and home health agencies located throughout much of Oklahoma. INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center was named in U.S. News & World Report's 2012 list of Best Hospitals. INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center ranks high-performing in the following categories: Cardiology and Heart Surgery; Diabetes and Endocrinology; Ear, Nose and Throat; Gastroenterology; Geriatrics; Nephrology; Orthopedics; Pulmonology and Urology.
The Midwest Regional Medical Center located in the suburb of Midwest City; other major hospitals in the city include the Oklahoma Heart Hospital and the Mercy Health Center. There are 347 physicians for every 100,000 people in the city.
In the American College of Sports Medicine's annual ranking of the United States' 50 most populous metropolitan areas on the basis of community health, Oklahoma City took last place in 2010, falling five places from its 2009 rank of 45. The ACSM's report, published as part of its American Fitness Index program, cited, among other things, the poor diet of residents, low levels of physical fitness, higher incidences of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease than the national average, low access to recreational facilities like swimming pools and baseball diamonds, the paucity of parks and low investment by the city in their development, the high percentage of households below the poverty level, and the lack of state-mandated physical education curriculum as contributing factors.
A hunter-gatherer is a human living in a society in which most or all food is obtained by foraging (collecting wild plants and pursuing wild animals), in contrast to agricultural societies, which rely mainly on domesticated species.
Hunting and gathering was humanity's first and most successful adaptation, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers have been displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world.
Only a few contemporary societies are classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture and/or keeping animals.
In the 1950s, Lewis Binford suggested that early humans were obtaining meat via scavenging, not hunting. Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands, which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view, they used carcasses of such animals that had either been killed by predators or that had died of natural causes. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover.
According to the endurance running hypothesis, long-distance running as in persistence hunting, a method still practiced by some hunter-gatherer groups in modern times, was likely the driving evolutionary force leading to the evolution of certain human characteristics. This hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis: both subsistence strategies could have been in use – sequentially, alternating or even simultaneously.
Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by Homo erectus, and from its appearance some 0.2 million years ago by Homo sapiens. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution.
Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers bands began to specialize, concentrating on hunting a smaller selection of (often larger) game and gathering a smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools, like fishing nets and hooks and bone harpoons. The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated and spread in several different areas including the Middle East, Asia, Mesoamerica, and the Andes beginning as early as 12,000 years ago.
Forest gardening was also being used as a food production system in various parts of the world over this period. Forest gardens originated in prehistoric times along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon regions.[citation needed] In the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected and improved, whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually superior foreign species were selected and incorporated into the gardens.
Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in the developing world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were formerly available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America, for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by the end of the Pleistocene—according to Diamond, because of overexploitation by humans, although the overkill hypothesis he advocates is strongly contested.[by whom?]
As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to the development of the first forms of government in agricultural centers, such as the Fertile Crescent, Ancient India, Ancient China, Olmec, Sub-Saharan Africa and Norte Chico.
As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas unsuitable for agricultural use.
Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available.
Some hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, lived in particularly rich environments that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary.
Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting the Northwest Coast of North America) are an exception to this rule. Nearly all African hunter-gatherers are egalitarian, with women roughly as influential and powerful as men.
The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers is never total, but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male. So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by palaeoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the evolutionary emergence of human consciousness, language, kinship and social organization.
Anthropologists maintain that hunter/gatherers don't have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed. In addition to social and economic equality in hunter-gatherer societies, there is often, though not always, sexual parity as well. Hunter-gatherers are often grouped together based on kinship and band (or tribe) membership. Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers tends to be matrilocal, at least initially. Young mothers can enjoy childcare support from their own mothers, who continue living nearby in the same camp. The systems of kinship and descent among human hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible, although there is evidence that early human kinship in general tended to be matrilineal.
It is easy for Western-educated scholars to fall into the trap of viewing hunter-gatherer social and sexual arrangements in the light of Western values.[editorializing] One common arrangement is the sexual division of labour, with women doing most of the gathering, while men concentrate on big game hunting. It might be imagined that this arrangement oppresses women, keeping them in the domestic sphere. However, according to some observers, hunter-gatherer women would not understand this interpretation. Since childcare is collective, with every baby having multiple mothers and male carers, the domestic sphere is not atomised or privatised but an empowering place to be.[citation needed] In all hunter-gatherer societies, women appreciate the meat brought back to camp by men. An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women Like Meat'. Recent archaeological research suggests that the sexual division of labor was the fundamental organisational innovation that gave Homo sapiens the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread across the globe.
To this day, most hunter-gatherers have a symbolically structured sexual division of labour. However, it is true that in a small minority of cases, women hunt the same kind of quarry as men, sometimes doing so alongside men. The best-known example are the Aeta people of the Philippines. According to one study, "About 85% of Philippine Aeta women hunt, and they hunt the same quarry as men. Aeta women hunt in groups and with dogs, and have a 31% success rate as opposed to 17% for men. Their rates are even better when they combine forces with men: mixed hunting groups have a full 41% success rate among the Aeta." Among the Ju'/hoansi people of Namibia, women help men track down quarry. Women in the Australian Martu also primarily hunt small animals like lizards to feed their children and maintain relations with other women.
At the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference, anthropologists Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore suggested that egalitarianism was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population. Therefore, no surplus of resources can be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were flux in territorial boundaries as well as in demographic composition.
At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented a paper entitled, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers lives as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense. Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin's view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day, where as people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day.
Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (i.e., meat gained from hunting) are important in the economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies. Therefore, these societies can be described as based on a "gift economy."
Hunter-gatherer societies manifest significant variability, depending on climate zone/life zone, available technology and societal structure. Archaeologists examine hunter-gatherer tool kits to measure variability across different groups. Collard et al. (2005) found temperature to be the only statistically significant factor to impact hunter-gatherer tool kits. Using temperature as a proxy for risk, Collard et al.'s results suggest that environments with extreme temperatures pose a threat to hunter-gatherer systems significant enough to warrant increased variability of tools. These results support Torrence's (1989) theory that risk of failure is indeed the most important factor in determining the structure of hunter-gatherer toolkits.
One way to divide hunter-gatherer groups is by their return systems. James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarian and "delayed return" for nonegalitarian. Immediate return foragers consume their food within a day or two after they procure it. Delayed return foragers store the surplus food (Kelly, 31).
Hunting-gathering was the common human mode of subsistence throughout the Paleolithic, but the observation of current-day hunters and gatherers does not necessarily reflect Paleolithic societies; the hunter-gatherer cultures examined today have had much contact with modern civilization and do not represent "pristine" conditions found in uncontacted peoples.
The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is not necessarily a one way process. It has been argued that hunting and gathering represents an adaptive strategy, which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in the last 10,000 years.[citation needed] This anthropological view has remained unchanged since the 1960s.[clarification needed][citation needed]
In the early 1980s, a small but vocal segment of anthropologists and archaeologists attempted to demonstrate that contemporary groups usually identified as hunter-gatherers do not, in most cases, have a continuous history of hunting and gathering, and that in many cases their ancestors were agriculturalists and/or pastoralists[citation needed] who were pushed into marginal areas as a result of migrations, economic exploitation, and/or violent conflict (see, for example, the Kalahari Debate). The result of their effort has been the general acknowledgement that there has been complex interaction between hunter-gatherers and non-hunter-gatherers for millennia.[citation needed]
Some of the theorists who advocate this "revisionist" critique imply that, because the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not long after colonial (or even agricultural) contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of modern ones (Kelly, 24-29; see Wilmsen)
Lee and Guenther have rejected most of the arguments put forward by Wilmsen. Doron Shultziner and others have argued that we can learn a lot about the life-styles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers—especially their impressive levels of egalitarianism.
Many hunter-gatherers consciously manipulate the landscape through cutting or burning undesirable plants while encouraging desirable ones, some even going to the extent of slash-and-burn to create habitat for game animals. These activities are on an entirely different scale to those associated with agriculture, but they are nevertheless domestication on some level. Today, almost all hunter-gatherers depend to some extent upon domesticated food sources either produced part-time or traded for products acquired in the wild.
Some agriculturalists also regularly hunt and gather (e.g., farming during the frost-free season and hunting during the winter). Still others in developed countries go hunting, primarily for leisure. In the Brazilian rainforest, those groups that recently did, or even continue to, rely on hunting and gathering techniques seem to have adopted this lifestyle, abandoning most agriculture, as a way to escape colonial control and as a result of the introduction of European diseases reducing their populations to levels where agriculture became difficult.[citation needed][dubious – discuss]
There are nevertheless a number of contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact with other societies, continue their ways of life with very little external influence. One such group is the Pila Nguru (Spinifex people) of Western Australia, whose habitat in the Great Victoria Desert has proved unsuitable for European agriculture (and even pastoralism).[citation needed] Another are the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, who live on North Sentinel Island and to date have maintained their independent existence, repelling attempts to engage with and contact them.[citation needed]
Evidence suggests big-game hunter gatherers crossed the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into North America over a land bridge (Beringia), that existed between 47,000–14,000 years ago. Around 18,500-15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America.
Hunter-gatherers would eventually flourish all over the Americas, primarily based in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, with offshoots as far east as the Gaspé Peninsula on the Atlantic coast, and as far south as Chile, Monte Verde.[citation needed] American hunter-gatherers were spread over a wide geographical area, thus there were regional variations in lifestyles. However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production, making knapping styles and progress identifiable. This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction tool adaptations have been found across the Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 25 to 50 members of an extended family.
The Archaic period in the Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna. The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers; but now individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally, thus with the passage of time there is a pattern of increasing regional generalization like, the Southwest, Arctic, Poverty, Dalton and Plano traditions. This regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish, seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant foods.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), formerly the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, is a UN organization. The UNFPA says it "is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled." Their work involves the improvement of reproductive health; including creation of national strategies and protocols, and providing supplies and services. The organization has recently been known for its worldwide campaign against obstetric fistula and female genital mutilation.
The UNFPA supports programs in more than 150 countries, territories and areas spread across four geographic regions: Arab States and Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Around three quarters of the staff work in the field. It is a member of the United Nations Development Group and part of its Executive Committee.
UNFPA began operations in 1969 as the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (the name was changed in 1987) under the administration of the United Nations Development Fund. In 1971 it was placed under the authority of the United Nations General Assembly.
In September 2015, the 193 member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 goals aiming to transform the world over the next 15 years. These goals are designed to eliminate poverty, discrimination, abuse and preventable deaths, address environmental destruction, and usher in an era of development for all people, everywhere.
The Sustainable Development Goals are ambitious, and they will require enormous efforts across countries, continents, industries and disciplines - but they are achievable. UNFPA is working with governments, partners and other UN agencies to directly tackle many of these goals - in particular Goal 3 on health, Goal 4 on education and Goal 5 on gender equality - and contributes in a variety of ways to achieving many of the rest.
Executive Directors and Under-Secretaries General of the UN 2011–present Dr Babatunde Osotimehin (Nigeria) 2000–2010 Ms Thoraya Ahmed Obaid (Saudi Arabia) 1987–2000 Dr Nafis Sadik (Pakistan) 1969–87 Mr Rafael M. Salas (Philippines)

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