Explore the rise (and fall) of baby names over time

The most popular American baby names by decade

In 1998, the Social Security Administration began ranking the top 1,000 most common first names for each year dating back to 1880. While that list has since been whittled down, Americans can still gain insight into the trending names of the decade. Whether it’s just for curiosity or to avoid more common choices, check out this list of popular names from the past century.

Most popular baby names in the US by year

The Social Security is one of the most authoritative sources for data on baby names each year. Here's the list of last year's top ten baby names among those children born in the US.

Explore an interactive history of Google search trends

This interactive allows users to browse for the most searched topics on Google Search since 1999 and provides noteworthy statistics. Topics are sorted by categories, including athletes, movies, reality TV, dog breeds, and sauces.

Data visualizations showing population growth around the world

This page presents data, charts, and analysis on changes in population growth around the world. Over the last few centuries, the human population has gone through an extraordinary change. In 1800, there were 1 billion people; today, there are more...

Visualizing decades of stock market performance

Stock markets and the indexes that track their biggest companies tend to ebb and flow, with long growth periods punctuated by shorter recessions. Track the 60-year history of one of the most common stock market indexes, the S&P 500, with this data visualization. The chart highlights the long-term durability of markets despite appearance of short-term volatility.

The term 'nepo baby' became popular in 2022, thanks in large part to social media.

Ranking the most popular undergraduate degrees of the last decade

Roughly 2 million Bachelor's degrees are awarded by colleges and universities in the US every year, but within that number there are big shifts in the popularity and decline of certain majors. This data visualization breaks down the biggest gainers...

The Beanie Baby craze is known as one of the wildest collectible bubbles in history

The Beanie Baby boom saw collectors drive prices for stuffed animals into the hundreds or thousands of dollars, fueled by hype surrounding scarcity and online bidding wars. When demand collapsed in the early 2000s, the market crashed—leaving steep losses for many speculators.

Visualizing cause of death over time in America

As people age, their life expectancy decreases, but the timing and speed of this decline have evolved over the years. Check out this chart which shows the shift in various causes of death of Americans over the last few decades. Data from the...

The latest data on US motherhood

Here’s a snapshot of what motherhood looks like in the U.S. today, drawn from government data and Pew Research Center surveys. The list includes seven headline statistics with visual graphs, including the average age of a mother's first childbirth...

See how faces on magazine covers have changed over time

This piece examined an archive of Time magazine containing 3,389 issues ranging from 1923 to 2014, focusing on 327,322 faces from the archive. Read what the researchers learned.

Visualizing how we dream via Google search trends

When dreams perplex us, we often want to understand them—and in the age of Google, millions go to its search engine to find answers. Now, researchers have compiled a decade's worth of dream-related queries to glean dream trends across seven languages. See what dream was most commonly searched in Arabic in 2015, or what fears and hopes are specific to one culture and time alone with this unique visual essay.

Track the changes in US immigration law throughout history

This interactive timeline tracks the development of US immigration law, overlaid with time-series data on percentages of the foreign-born population. Explore how each major policy development correlated with immigration levels, revealing the relationship between legislation and demographic change.

Visualizing Hollywood's flops and winners in 2023

Is the movie worth watching? See how this year's cinematic releases compare with one another by revenue and popularity with this simple chart. Hollywood movies can be ranked on two axes: their popular rating and total revenues earned. In this data...

Beanie Babies used to be viewed by some as alternative investments

Beanie Baby stuffed animals were once a hot collector item with skyrocketing prices as people believed that the toys would significantly grow in value over time.

Tennis' global evolution

In the 1970s and 1980s, American men and women dominated the top 100 rankings on both tours. But as each tour expanded its global reach, the American dominance declined. This Bleacher Report analysis breaks down the national make-up of the top 100 players for each decade. View maps that show which country gained and lost rankings through each decade and see who is the top country now.

Explore this week-by-week visualization of pregnancy

This graphic illustrates how development proceeds during each week of pregnancy, tracking what shifts and milestones typically occur during each stage of the process. It also includes typical weights of the fetus throughout.

One writer traces the evolution of a Billboard chart over 25 years

Billboard introduced its Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1988, looking to capture the rising popularity of acts like the Cure, REM, and U2. Music writer and Billboard obsessive Chris Molanphy traces the chart from his earliest days through grunge, alternative, and corporate eras, demonstrating just how much taste changes over time.

The stock market has crashed many times throughout history

Have you ever wondered how long it takes the market to recover after a crash? This chart outlines major stock market dips throughout history and tracks how many days it took for the market to recover.

How public policy shapes demographic trends

This IMF podcast explores the population booms and busts throughout human history. According to Harvard economist and demographer David Bloom, it took more than 50,000 years for the world population to reach 1 billion. But since 1960, we have added...

An interactive look at your own life through demographics

This interactive site allows you to understand the journey of your life in numbers and dates. World Data Lab asks users to enter their date of birth, country of birth, and sex at birth. The site then provides an interactive page tailored to your...

Some critics say comparing chart rankings across decades is meaningless

Although Billboard’s charts are presented as objective measures of a given song’s popularity, the company’s changing methodology (alongside changes in technology and listener habits) has made weighing chart success from different eras an imperfect science.

Is the love song dying?

This visual essay, compiled using 65 years of industry data, is an entertaining trip through the history of pop music, exploring whether or not music has grown less romantic. But, at its heart, this isn't about the Billboard charts—it's about the many different ways we define romance.

An interactive timeline of history's famous figures

The past few millennia of humankind have produced numerous figures who left their mark on culture and society in their respective era. This interactive timeline from data visualization expert Jan Willem pulls data from Wikipedia to illustrate history's most important people relative to their prominence in modern-day thought.

Check the real-time price of bitcoin

Bitcoin has gone through several boom and bust cycles. Those peaks and valleys sit on top of a steadily rising value, growing as the currency gains wider adoption. As of 2024, bitcoin’s total market value was over $1.3T, with more than 19.6 million coins in circulation. Still, the value fluctuates.

Charting the most popular email providers since 1997

The email is the most stable feature of the Internet; a rare digital product that changed little over the decades. Nonetheless, the major email service providers have vastly shifted. Watch this time-based chart which shows the number of users of the top 10 email providers since 1997, and see how totally nonexistent Gmail skyrockets to dominance by today.

Understanding the global crash in fertility rates

This article breaks down the global crash in fertility rates. According to researchers, a global crash in children being born will have a “jaw-dropping” impact on societies. Women are choosing to have fewer children as a result of more women in...

Triplet birth numbers are dropping—and that may be a good thing

Pregnancies involving three kids or more have dropped 62% from 1998 to 2023, a trend that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention links to fewer embryo transfers during assisted reproduction procedures—a transition prompted by more refined techniques and technical advances. Though multiple births can occur naturally, often pregnancies involving multiple births have been the result of efforts to ensure pregnancy success by transferring multiple embryos.

Pop culture sometimes changes the way people invest

After the "Barbie" movie premiered, the number of investors in Barbie parent company Mattel's stock grew more than six times larger on the investment platform Public, according to the platform's recent report. Other cultural trends have affected which stocks investors choose as well.

Striking demographic trends from 2022

This article lists the 15 most striking research findings by Pew Research Center in 2022. The topics highlighted represent a sample of the Center’s research, compiled through surveys. Findings examine public opinion around the biggest news events...

Each day, about 60 US pregnancies end in stillbirth

This online memorial for families who experienced the unexpected death of a fetus 20 weeks or older is the result of ProPublica reporters inviting 60 families to share their baby's name and answer some questions about their unfulfilled wishes for their children. About 21,000 babies are stillborn in the US annually. About the same number of children die in the US during their first year of life.

America's demographic change in one chart

From 1901 to 2020, the US population has changed significantly. This video reveals the change in America’s demographics over more than 100 years.

Everything you need to know about demography in 10 graphs

This 17-minute video explains the future of the world through demographic data points. Dr. Paul Morland has published three books on demography. In this talk, he shows how demography is a powerful lens to view global transformations. Included are...

See which countries have already reached their peak population, and when others will eventually reach theirs.

See the origins of the foreign-born population of the United States from 1850 to 2020.

Browse over a century of issues of Billboard, the definitive music industry magazine, to trace nearly every American musical trend of the past century.

Eight demographic trends to watch

This list highlights eight demographic trends expected to shape the world in the coming decades. The world’s population is projected to hit 9 billion in 2037. In that time, India will overtake China in population, and the Democratic Republic of...

Explore how the most commonly used words in the English language have changed from the 1950s to 2023.

See a timeline that shows how volatile oil prices have been for decades, from OPEC-led embargoes in the 1970s and shale surges in the 2000s to the US flipping to become a net oil exporter in 2020.

Experience over 100 years of basketball history with a visual, interactive timeline.

How the internet became the World Wide Web: a visualization

The internet was officially born in 1983 and had more than 150 million global users by 1997, creating an international web of seemingly separate networks. This data visualization shows the growth of the internet from 1997 to 2021. Data in this...

The most common birthdays

Nine of the top 10 most common birthdays fall in September, with Sept. 9 being the most common. However, August is the most common birth month, followed by July and December. On the flip side, the least common birthdays are around major holidays, with Christmas Day being the rarest—probably due to doctors scheduling fewer inductions and C-sections on those days. Find out more birthday surprises here.

Explore a visual timeline of fintech’s history and growth

From the debut of the world’s first ATM in 1967, to Apple Pay launching in 2014, financial technologies have come a very long way in a relatively short historical period. A colorful visual timeline highlights some of the most important milestones along the way.

View a tracker of the most popular search engines from 1993 to 2021

Before Google dethroned Yahoo! as the most popular search engine in 2002 on its way to dominating the market, significant shares of internet searches were conducted across multiple sites, including MSN, AOL, AskJeeves, and AltaVista.

Visualizing the symbols and history of world flags

More than 200 world flags feature high-intent designs, projecting ideals and values to the world through archetypal symbols, colors, and shapes. This page effectively depicts the data behind symbol and shape usage, how much each country's flag has changed over time, the most popular colors used, and more in a series of elegantly simple charts.

Pizza's popularity has waned in the 2020s

The food remains popular, but it has lagged behind the growth of other fast food spots like coffee shops and Mexican restaurants. It ranked sixth in US food sales from restaurant chains in 2024; it was in the second slot throughout the 1990s. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Google reveals the top searches of 2023

Google Search remains the world's most popular online search engine, and the tech behemoth reveals the most common searches from at the end of every year. See global as well as more local trends in most common searches for people, films, and more.

The history of infographics: cave art to interactive visuals

When did humans first create infographics? This article and related infographics detail how artistic data representations have evolved alongside humans and other hominins. The roots of infographics can be traced back to cave paintings, such as...

Explore an up-to-date layoffs tracker with Layoffs.fyi, a tool that a startup founder created in 2020 to track tech and startup layoffs in real time.

Infographics explaining global terrorism trends

Our World in Data’s terrorism page details global trends in terrorism. Through interactive infographics, the site shows how the number of terrorist acts varies around the world and how it has changed over time. Sections investigate common definitions of terrorism, trends in global terrorism deaths, and the global distribution of terrorism. Additional segments highlight airline hijackings, public opinion, and media coverage of terrorism. Explore this website for an array of infographics on terrorism.