Oregon Office of Economic Analysis

As you may have noticed, blogging has been light lately and for personal reasons, just as it was about two years ago, it will continue to be so in the weeks and months ahead as me and my family adjust and welcome another addition.

While the typical family in the U.S. has averaged just under 2 kids for the past 30 years, the most common household size is 4 — two adults and two children. Less than 1 in 20 (19%) married couple families have 3 or more children (family size of 5 or larger) and only 5% have 4 or more children. I come from a family of 4, my wife from a family of 6, so I guess we’ll see where we end up ourselves…

One important duty when it comes to kids and families is choosing names. The Social Security Administrations’ baby name database is a fascinating tool that helps you explore names over time and their relative popularity. Luckily, my wife and I have had a relatively easy time choosing names and popularity was not a factor in our decision, although that doesn’t mean I didn’t put together graphs and analyze trends! Below are the 3 names we were strongly considering for our daughter and their relative popularity. It’s fascinating to see the big swings. As you might have guessed the two blue lines were the names of our grandmothers — popular back in the early 1900s and rising in popularity today as parents name their children after their grandmother.

Anyway, just some fun data and graphs. I’ll be back in the office working on the upcoming forecast in the near future. However, overall blog activity will be lower. I have a few posts ready to go in the coming weeks, but beyond that we shall see.