USPS mail carrier dog bite incidents

As Americans have consumed more bottled water per capita, fewer mail carriers have been bitten by dogs, a correlation that suggests either that hydrated Americans produce calmer dogs or that the same delivery infrastructure replacing physical mail is also delivering bottled water. The coefficient is -0.890 across eight years, during which both trends moved with the comfortable predictability of a society that drinks more water and sends less mail. The dogs are calmer, the carriers are safer, and the plastic bottles accumulate.

Per capita bottled water consumption grew from about 40 gallons per year in 2016 to over 47 gallons by 2023, as water surpassed soda as America's most consumed packaged beverage. USPS dog bite incidents declined from about 6,755 to roughly 5,300 as mail volume decreased and carriers made fewer residential stops. The connection is indirect but real: the same e-commerce infrastructure that delivers bottled water (and everything else) to American doorsteps has reduced the volume of traditional mail, meaning fewer encounters between carriers and territorial dogs. The bottled water itself has nothing to do with the dogs, but the delivery economy that distributes it has everything to do with the decline of physical mail.

Eight years of bottled water and dog bites is a story about the delivery economy reshaping both what Americans consume and how they receive it. The water arrives by truck, the mail arrives less often, and the dogs have fewer targets. The hydration improves, the bites decrease, and the connection between them runs through the same supply chain that changed everything.