  The Yarkovsky effect is a thermal process acting upon the orbits of small
celestial bodies, which can cause these orbits to slowly expand or contract
with time. The effect is subtle (da/dt ~ 10^-4 au/My for a 1 km diameter
object) and is thus generally difficult to measure. We analyzed both optical
and radar astrometry for 600 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) for the purpose of
detecting and quantifying the Yarkovsky effect. We present 247 NEAs with
measured drift rates, which is the largest published set of Yarkovsky
detections. This large sample size provides an opportunity to examine the
Yarkovsky effect in a statistical manner. In particular, we describe two
independent population-based tests that verify the measurement of Yarkovsky
orbital drift. First, we provide observational confirmation for the Yarkovsky
effect's theoretical size dependence of 1/D, where D is diameter. Second, we
find that the observed ratio of negative to positive drift rates in our sample
is 2.34, which, accounting for bias and sampling uncertainty, implies an actual
ratio of $2.7^{+0.3}_{-0.7}$. This ratio has a vanishingly small probability of
occurring due to chance or statistical noise. The observed ratio of retrograde
to prograde rotators is two times lower than the ratio expected from numerical
predictions from NEA population studies and traditional assumptions about the
sense of rotation of NEAs originating from various main belt escape routes. We
also examine the efficiency with which solar energy is converted into orbital
energy and find a median efficiency in our sample of 12%. We interpret this
efficiency in terms of NEA spin and thermal properties.
