Mineral Information Institute
A Division of SME Foundation
8307 Shaffer Parkway, Littleton CO 80127
Phone: 303/277-9190 Fax: 303/277-9198
Process for Calculating the mii Baby
— inquiries should be addressed to mii@mii.org
Per Capita Annual Consumption
To annually update the MII Baby, statistics from the US Geological Survey Mineral
Commodity Summaries (annual reports available on-line at
minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/ ) and the Energy Information
Administration (www.eia.doe.gov/ ) provide the amounts of various minerals and
energy fuels that are consumed in the United States. Both sources provide annual
“apparent consumption” data which is used, rather than production statistics.
Leslie Coleman with the Statistic Services group of the National Mining Association
provides the analysis to generate the per capita mineral usage, by converting these
statistics from (in most cases) metric tonnes to pounds and dividing by the most
current US population estimate (which increases a little more than 1% each year).
This provides the U.S. Annual Mineral Use Per Person statistic.
To provide a weight statistic, the petroleum and natural gas numbers are converted
from volume to weight measurements.
To create the lifetime statistic—
This annual per capita consumption (which varies between 46,000 lbs. And 48,000
lbs.) is multiplied by the average life expectancy for newborns in the US, provided
by the Center for Disease Control. This estimate is usually two to three years out of
date. The life expectancy statistic between men and women is averaged.
The most current MII Baby can be downloaded from www.mii.org