"Several years ago Inc. estimated there were about 15,000 tattoo parlors in America, making somewhere north of $2.3 billion annually."

"Joe Miller, owner of Old Larimer Street Tattoo in Denver, says that he's currently taking home about $125,000 annually...He says his tattoo artist colleagues average about $50,000 a year, and a good number scrape by on less than half that."

And Scottie DeVille, owner of Th'ink Tank Tattoo in Denver, says "Since we've opened, our profits have increased about 10 percent per year. In 2008, the average hourly [rate per artist] was $120. Today the average is $150."

• 24% of respondents have Tattoo's -- 22% Women, 26% Men
• 14% of respondents have Body Piercings
• 37% of respondents have had military experience
• 58% of respondents have spent >= 3 days in jail

• At all levels of education, the prevalence of tattoos was significantly higher among those of lower education.

• Of those with tattoos, 76% had been in jail for 3 days or more multiple tattoos.

• Recreational drug use was significantly more common among the tattooed.

•  Body piercing varies little by educational status. However, as with tattooing, body piercing occurs more among those who partake in risky activities such as heavy drinking, drug taking, and actions that lead to incarceration.

I've hung out at enough tattoo studios, so the conclusions did not surprise me, but this fact did:

"We found no difference in tattoo prevalence between ethnic groups with presumably all gradation of skin color, except that tattoos were twice as common among those with Hispanic ancestry than all other ethnic groups combined. Presumably permanently decorating the skin is a fashion or a cultural practice rather than appearance driven."

This could be a holdover of past cultural ties to earlier non western tattoo methods, which is an interesting sociological observation, but one for another day.