The bottom line

Life expectancy for the rich and poor

Over the last three decades, the difference in average life expectancy between the poorest and richest 10 percent of Americans has grown. The rich lived 2.8 years longer than the poor in the early 1980s and 4.5 years longer in the late ’90s, and the difference has widened further since then, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

CNN.com

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Trouble with fractions

Nearly half of American eighth-graders cannot put three fractions in order by value. Fractions are typically introduced to students in the third grade.

The Wall Street Journal

Fast food slowdown

McDonald’s posted its slowest-ever drive-through time in 15 years in 2013—an average of 189.5 seconds from order to pickup, or roughly nine seconds longer than the industry average. Chick-fil-A customers have the longest waits, at 203.9 seconds. The fast food slowdown is largely thanks to increasingly complex recipes for fast food.

USA Today

Good news for independent bookstores

Despite competition from Amazon and chain bookstores, the number of mom-and-pop bookshops may be on the rise. The American Booksellers Association says its membership rolls have gone up every year for the past four years, from 1,401 in 2009 to 1,632 this year.

Qz.com

Apple's billions

Apple is rich. The computer-maker’s profits in 2012 dwarfed the competition, outpacing the combined net profits of Coca-Cola, Google, and IBM. The company holds $147 billion in cash reserves, or 10 percent of all non-financial corporate cash in the U.S.

TheAtlantic.com