Oh, how I love numbers. Elizabeth from Half Changed World succeeded where I have failed and found the secret, all-but-unreadable at-home dad numbers. (She has also thoughtfully posted on the numbers.) I have mauled the data into a manageable form; geeks may download the Excel spreadsheet.

The topline figure -- as Elizabeth mentioned yesterday -- is pretty shocking: 147,000 at-home dads, up 50 percent from a year ago. (Please see all of the reasons I dislike the Census stats before taking this as an endorsement). Let me lay it out for you:

2004: 147,000
2003: 98,000
2002: 106,000
2001: 81,000
2000: 93,000
1999: 71,000
1998: 90,000

So, yeah, something big is going on here.

The document Elizabeth forwarded along has some other interesting stats. Of the 147,000 of you who made the cut (I'm not counted), the most common age group for at-home dads is the 40-44 year-old group, followed by the 35-39 age group. I had expected to see things tilted more toward the Gen Xers with little ones, but it looks like that's not happening yet.

And this isn't the province of guys rich enough to make the choice a no-brainer: 25,000 (17 percent) are in households making $100,000+, while 95,000 (64 percent) have family incomes below $40K. (See the Half Changed World post for a more complete analysis.)

Twenty-nine percent of at-home dads have only kids under 6, 40 percent have only kids between 6 and 17 years old.

Tags: SAHD blog dad census stay+at+home+dad