The link has a link to all historical earned merits per rank, indicating the number of profiles with a given rank and number of merits. It’s delimited to Brand New and Newbie on the file's current view, but all data is there for all ranks (just play with the filter).
In summary, for the lower (current) ranks there are (all time merit data):
Brand new 1 139
Brand new 2 35
Brand new 3 12
Brand New 4 5
Brand new 5 6
Brand new 6 3
Brand new 7 3
Brand new 8 2
Brand new 10 8
Brand new 12 1
Brand new 13 2
Brand new 16 1
Brand new 18 2
Brand new 19 1
Brand new 29 1
Brand new 33 1
Brand new 50 2
Brand new 127 1
Newbie 1 2349
Newbie 2 719
Newbie 3 287
Newbie 4 194
Newbie 5 177
Newbie 6 73
Newbie 7 67
Newbie 8 43
Newbie 9 28
Newbie 10 148
Newbie 11 22
Newbie 12 21
Newbie 13 15
Newbie 14 11
Newbie 15 16
Newbie 16 12
Newbie 17 5
Newbie 18 8
Newbie 19 5
Newbie 20 20
Newbie 21 8
Newbie 22 5
Newbie 23 5
Newbie 24 3
Newbie 25 5
Newbie 26 3
Newbie 27 4
Newbie 28 2
Newbie 29 4
Newbie 30 8
Newbie 31 1
Newbie 34 2
Newbie 36 2
Newbie 37 2
Newbie 38 1
Newbie 39 1
Newbie 40 1
Newbie 41 2
Newbie 42 1
Newbie 43 1
Newbie 45 1
Newbie 46 1
Newbie 47 1
Newbie 50 5
Newbie 51 2
Newbie 53 1
Newbie 55 1
Newbie 60 1
Newbie 63 1
Newbie 65 1
Newbie 66 1
Newbie 67 1
Newbie 70 1
Newbie 74 1
Newbie 78 1
Newbie 82 1
Newbie 100 3
Newbie 128 1
Newbie 148 1