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Still standing out: children's names in the United States during the Great Recession and correlations with economic indicators
Author(s) -
Twenge Jean M.,
Dawson Lauren,
Campbell W. Keith
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12409
Subject(s) - individualism , recession , great recession , demographic economics , psychology , social security , economics , labour economics , macroeconomics , market economy
Continuing a long‐standing trend in the U.S. Social Security Administration database of first names ( N = 358 million), American parents were less likely to choose common names for their children between 2004 and 2015, including the years of the Great Recession (2008–2010). These trends were similar in California (severely affected by the recession) and Texas (less affected). Over a longer time period (1901–2015), cyclical economic indicators were either not correlated with common names (e.g., stock market performance) or worse economic times predicted fewer common names. The results are consistent with increasing individualism, with limited support for the idea that economic threat leads people to embrace uniqueness and no real support for the idea that economic deprivation leads to more communal name choices.