If you lose your wallet in a big city such as New York City, do you expect to ever see it again? Do you expect to recover your money and keep the party on? Well, New Yorkers surely know how to make your hopes stay high!
Students in an urban studies class at Barnard College recently dropped wallets on the street as part of an experiment to see whether or not New Yorkers returned them. The outcome surprised them all: In 132 drops from the Bronx to Brooklyn, the wallet was stolen a mere two percent of the time! 3% of the time, the person tried but failed to give it back, and 13% of the time, no one picked it up.
Ironically, the riskiest place to lose your wallet is in the Upper East Side of the city. Students attempted to drop it in a neighborhood where the median income is $126,000, and expected a higher than average drop rate. In fact it was worse there than in other places!