A couple of days ago there was a scheduled power outage in our neighborhood. PG&E were replacing a power pole up the street, and they indicated that our power might be out for up to eight hours. To ensure our fridge stayed cool without power, we froze a couple of large bowls of water the … Continue reading Ice in August

Each year the Census Bureau's American Community Survey queries a subset of Americans about their housing status. One of the questions is how long the respondent has lived in their current residence. This is done for both owners and renters; for now, I'll look at owners. The question asks, effectively, "when did you move into … Continue reading Homebodies

So far my posts regarding the American Time Use Survey have mostly looked at the data from 2003 to 2023 as a whole, summing up twenty years worth of results to analyze how Americans spend their time. But for certain activities the data has changed over the past two decades - we either spend more … Continue reading Time, Over Time

Today I'm back to looking at the American Time Use Survey. Let's take a look at the differences between sexes when it comes to time spent on various activities. The table below lists the main activity categories, with the average time spent (in minutes, per day) by women and men, and the difference (positive difference … Continue reading A Woman’s Work is Never Done. Really.

A graphic showed up on Instagram recently containing an interesting factoid about the Gross Domestic Product of the United States. Pretty amazing, right? Actually, not as amazing as it seems. I did a little digging and found what is likely to be the source of this: a USA Today article from 2019, which includes this … Continue reading Shades of the Truth

It's axiomatic that reading to young children is A Good Thing. But how do we determine how often parents do this? One technique is to simply ask them. Here are the results of a few studies that did this: A Pew Research Center study suggests that "half of all parents with children under 12 (50%) … Continue reading Reading to Children

I take a drug called Ocrevus to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis. It's an immunosuppressive drug, the upshot of which is that I cannot receive live vaccines; the risk is that I would actually contract the disease I was getting vaccinated for. It turns out that the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine is live, which means … Continue reading Mickey Measles

[Apologies for the resend - the table didn't show up in the email. You have to click on the title in the email (or the Continue Reading button) to view the correctly-formatted post in the browser] How do we spend our time? For twenty years the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has tried to … Continue reading Time Isn’t After Us (take two)

[Apologies for the resend - the table didn't show up in the email. You have to follow the link in the email to get the correctly-formatted post] How do we spend our time? For twenty years the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has tried to answer that, with a study called the American Time … Continue reading Time Isn’t After Us

This post continues looking at the migration data from the IRS. This data is based on tax returns submitted by individuals, which means that financial information is available. At each geographic level (nation, state, and county) the IRS includes not only the number of tax returns submitted, but the total Adjust Gross Income (AGI) of … Continue reading The Income of Movers