Utah still unique, but becoming more like nation

Ask Adrian Oliphant what life is like with an extra-large family, and he half jokes, "I don't know. I only have eight children."

The West Valley resident adds that he grew up in a family of 11 children, "so having eight never hit me as being that big."

He's not alone in Utah, which again, according to new census survey data for 2008 released today, has the nation's largest family size (3.76 people, compared to 3.22 nationally).

That's not all. Utah has the nation's youngest median age (thanks to all those children); most stay-at-home moms; highest rate of women who gave birth last year; the people who marry the youngest; the most households headed by married couples; and the most households with children.

While Utah has led on such family-matter data for decades — thanks largely to the influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the state is trending away from being so different. It is slowly becoming more like the rest of America.

"We still have the largest family sizes, but they are trending down. We have the highest fertility rate, but it's trending down. We have the youngest median age, but it's going up. We're about a generation and a half or two behind the nation," said University of Utah research economist Pam Perlich.

Utah state demographer Juliette Tennert adds, "We are becoming more and more like the nation. But I do think we'll always maintain that difference at some level. It's going to be a really long time before Utah would match the nation."

Perlich echoes that, saying, "Every small area has demographics that are different than the entire nation, but we're all sort of being pulled by national trends."

For example, when Oliphant was asked if he and his wife married young, He said, "No, I was 23 and my wife was 20." That was near average when they married in the early '80s, but median ages for first marriages in Utah have crept up since then.

It is now 26.1 years old for men, and 23.5 for women. As recently as the 2000-03 period, it was 23.9 for men and 21.9 for women.

Another example of change in Utah is the rising median age, which has reached 28.7 years old. In 2000, it was 27.1. So Utah's median age has jumped by 1.6 years in just eight years.