Fireworks-related deaths

As the number of homeschooled students in the US has grown, fireworks-related deaths have also increased, a correlation that raises the question of whether homeschool science projects have gotten out of hand. The coefficient is 0.801 across twenty-one years, during which both metrics climbed with the patient persistence of trends that operate at the margins of American culture. The chemistry set is unsupervised, the firework is unregulated, and the chart makes no judgments about either.

Homeschool students grew from about 1.1 million in 2002 to over 3.3 million by 2022, driven by religious conviction, dissatisfaction with public schools, and the pandemic's massive (and partly permanent) push toward home education. Fireworks deaths fluctuated from about 5–10 per year but spiked to over 18 during the pandemic years when professional displays were cancelled and amateur fireworks sales surged. Both trends were amplified by the same anti-institutional impulse: homeschooling reflects a preference for family-managed education over public systems, and amateur fireworks reflect a preference for DIY celebration over municipal events. The pandemic accelerated both.

Twenty-one years of homeschooling and fireworks deaths growing together is a story about a society where more activities are moving from institutional to individual management—from public school to home, from municipal display to backyard. The control shifts, the risk follows, and the correlation between them is simply the sound of America doing more things itself. The curriculum is personalized. The fuse is lit. The supervision varies.