This table seeks to answer the following question: If I am a father of age X (value on the x axis), how likely I am I to parent a child with a woman of age at least Y (value on the y axis)? The values in the chart are the proportion of all births (out of 1.0) in the US in 2024 where the father was age X, and the mother was at least age Y. The chart was made in Matplotlib, with data on all 3.6 million births of children in the US in 2024, available from the CDC here .
Here are a few examples of conclusions from the table:
– 95% (from the data point 0.95 on row 3 column 5) of births to 30 yo fathers was with a woman who was at least 24 years old. Therefore, it is rare for a 30yo man to have a child with a woman less than 24.
– Less than 10% of men aged approximately 40 had children with women under 30 years old (this is from inverting the value 0.9 in the chart). Therefore, it is unusual but not unheard of for a 40 year old man to have a child with a woman under 30.
This chart enables us to make assessments about the likelihood of various age differences having a child together. It is cumulative, because often when we talk about age gaps we do not talk about exact ages but rather that someone is younger (i.e. under an age) or older (i.e. over an age).
by lorisaurus
3 Comments
There’s been like 10+ posts on this same topic in the past few days, what’s going on?
Did some data release or something?
This is a super confusing chart and not intuitive at all. Having two different meanings for the ages on each axis is an odd choice. I don’t think “at least Y age” makes sense for the Y axis in women. It makes the men look like creeps at first glance.
You should do age brackets for both men and women, which would likely show the highest proportion in the midline (ie. most people have babies with other folks their age) and then you can see more extreme age gaps as you go out to the sides.
The more interesting question is “how many people have an age gap of X years at Y age for men and women?” The current graph does not answer the question, but one with age brackets on each axis would.
This plot is awful, and I’ve been subjected to it multiple times now.