The liberal baby bust

[BigSqwert]

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The liberal baby bust

By Phillip Longman

What's the difference between Seattle and Salt Lake City? There are many differences, of course, but here's one you might not know. In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs.

 

This curious fact might at first seem trivial, but it reflects a much broader and little-noticed demographic trend that has deep implications for the future of global culture and politics. It's not that people in a progressive city such as Seattle are so much fonder of dogs than are people in a conservative city such as Salt Lake City. It's that progressives are so much less likely to have children.

 

It's a pattern found throughout the world, and it augers a far more conservative future — one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default. Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.

 

Today, fertility correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural and religious attitudes. In the USA, for example, 47% of people who attend church weekly say their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, 27% of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.

 

In Utah, where more than two-thirds of residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 92 children are born each year for every 1,000 women, the highest fertility rate in the nation. By contrast Vermont — the first to embrace gay unions — has the nation's lowest rate, producing 51 children per 1,000 women.

 

Similarly, in Europe today, the people least likely to have children are those most likely to hold progressive views of the world. For instance, do you distrust the army and other institutions and are you prone to demonstrate against them? Then, according to polling data assembled by demographers Ron Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn, you are less likely to be married and have kids or ever to get married and have kids. Do you find soft drugs, homosexuality and euthanasia acceptable? Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? Europeans who answer affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live alone or be in childless, cohabiting unions than are those who answer negatively.

 

This correlation between secularism, individualism and low fertility portends a vast change in modern societies. In the USA, for example, nearly 20% of women born in the late 1950s are reaching the end of their reproductive lives without having children. The greatly expanded childless segment of contemporary society, whose members are drawn disproportionately from the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and '70s, will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of people who did raise children.

 

Single-child factor

 

Meanwhile, single-child families are prone to extinction. A single child replaces one of his or her parents, but not both. Consequently, a segment of society in which single-child families are the norm will decline in population by at least 50% per generation and quite quickly disappear. In the USA, the 17.4% of baby boomer women who had one child account for a mere 9.2% of kids produced by their generation. But among children of the baby boom, nearly a quarter descend from the mere 10% of baby boomer women who had four or more kids.

 

This dynamic helps explain the gradual drift of American culture toward religious fundamentalism and social conservatism. Among states that voted for President Bush in 2004, the average fertility rate is more than 11% higher than the rate of states for Sen. John Kerry.

 

It might also help to explain the popular resistance among rank-and-file Europeans to such crown jewels of secular liberalism as the European Union. It turns out that Europeans who are most likely to identify themselves as "world citizens" are also less likely to have children.

 

Rewriting history?

 

Why couldn't tomorrow's Americans and Europeans, even if they are disproportionately raised in patriarchal, religiously minded households, turn out to be another generation of '68? The key difference is that during the post-World War II era, nearly all segments of society married and had children. Some had more than others, but there was much more conformity in family size between the religious and the secular. Meanwhile, thanks mostly to improvements in social conditions, there is no longer much difference in survival rates for children born into large families and those who have few if any siblings.

 

Tomorrow's children, therefore, unlike members of the postwar baby boom generation, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society. To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents' values, as often happens. But when they look for fellow secularists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born.

 

Many will celebrate these developments. Others will view them as the death of the Enlightenment. Either way, they will find themselves living through another great cycle of history.

[Balta1701]

Don't worry, Iraq will soon take care of this whole thing.

 

Of course, the problem with this argument is fairly obvious IMO...while parents do have an affect on their children's political beliefs, there's certainly no 100% guarantee that just because a child has conservative parents, they'll also grow up to be conservative, or liberal, or whatever.

 

There are a huge variety of other factors that can and will come into play as demographics shift. The trends with factors like income and education tend to be much more strongly correlated with voting patterns than do who your parents are. Naturally, if your family is that one which rides around the country protesting soldier's funerals the correlation may hold more strongly, but even then, there's always the possibility of movement, especially given unforseen political events in the future.

 

A person could always be raised in a conservative family, go to college, wind up in a left-leaning dorm, spend 10 years as a communist, get married, wind up with a high income, and vote himself or herself some nice shiny new tax cuts, and then realize when they'r 64 that those tax cuts for them whipper snappers are gonna cut into social security and medicare.

[NorthSideSox72]

I tend to think that Utah may be a bit of an outlier, but this article uses only a sparse few actual statistics.

 

I agree with Balta's point of course.

 

Also, don't poor urban families often have more children than well-off urban families? And those poor neighborhoods in large cities vote overwhelmingly for Dems. And, the population trends in this country are tending more and more towards urban areas, away from rural America.

 

In short, this writer seems to have blinders on.

[WCSox]

One non-political/religious reason for this could be that the cost of living in America has gone up tremendously over the past decade. Why have children when healthcare costs and student loan repayments are making it difficult to make ends meet every month?

[vandy125]

One non-political/religious reason for this could be that the cost of living in America has gone up tremendously over the past decade.  Why have children when healthcare costs and student loan repayments are making it difficult to make ends meet every month?

 

Reminds me of a saying that I have heard. "If you wait until you can afford to have kids, you never will."

[jackie hayes]

Don't worry, Iraq will soon take care of this whole thing.

 

Of course, the problem with this argument is fairly obvious IMO...while parents do have an affect on their children's political beliefs, there's certainly no 100% guarantee that just because a child has conservative parents, they'll also grow up to be conservative, or liberal, or whatever.

 

There are a huge variety of other factors that can and will come into play as demographics shift.  The trends with factors like income and education tend to be much more strongly correlated with voting patterns than do who your parents are.  Naturally, if your family is that one which rides around the country protesting soldier's funerals the correlation may hold more strongly, but even then, there's always the possibility of movement, especially given unforseen political events in the future.

 

A person could always be raised in a conservative family, go to college, wind up in a left-leaning dorm, spend 10 years as a communist, get married, wind up with a high income, and vote himself or herself some nice shiny new tax cuts, and then realize when they'r 64 that those tax cuts for them whipper snappers are gonna cut into social security and medicare.

Why do we need a "100% guarantee" for this to be a good argument? Sure, there are other factors, but if this one is important (plausible), it will influence elections, at least if it's independent of those other factors (also plausible).

 

This sounds like one of those arguments that dismisses all statistical theory with the answer, 'Well, it doesn't ALWAYS happen that way.' And I'm surprised you'd make that argument...

[Balta1701]

Why do we need a "100% guarantee" for this to be a good argument?  Sure, there are other factors, but if this one is important (plausible), it will influence elections, at least if it's independent of those other factors (also plausible).

 

This sounds like one of those arguments that dismisses all statistical theory with the answer, 'Well, it doesn't ALWAYS happen that way.'  And I'm surprised you'd make that argument...

Ok, so it's level of importance may be non-zero. But if I had to list my top 20 concerns about things which would have the ability to swing elections in the next 30-40 years, this concern would not even make the list.

 

I'm not trying to dismiss all statistical theory, I just think that this is such a minor component that it's not even worth spending effort to think about. If I did a principal component analysis, it would be one of the components barely above the noise. There are plenty of other reasons why trends may be trending democratic even beyond this one, single metric. Hell, there was a decent book about that a few years ago.

 

If nothing else, think about this...how logical does it seem to draw conclusions based only on population growth within a state, without considering the groups of people who are growing, those who are stagnant, which regions are growing, how each of them vote, etc. Simply drawing lines at the states is how the electoral college does things, but it's not always the best way to analyze things.

 

You want a demographic trend that will be of vital importance to the next 30 years of elections? Watch the Hispanic vote. Highly volatile, no firm party affiliation, lots of ability to change.

[jackie hayes]

Ok, so it's level of importance may be non-zero.  But if I had to list my top 20 concerns about things which would have the ability to swing elections in the next 30-40 years, this concern would not even make the list.

 

I'm not trying to dismiss all statistical theory, I just think that this is such a minor component that it's not even worth spending effort to think about.  If I did a principal component analysis, it would be one of the components barely above the noise.  There are plenty of other reasons why trends may be trending democratic even beyond this one, single metric.  Hell, there was a decent book about that a few years ago.

 

If nothing else, think about this...how logical does it seem to draw conclusions based only on population growth within a state, without considering the groups of people who are growing, those who are stagnant, which regions are growing, how each of them vote, etc.  Simply drawing lines at the states is how the electoral college does things, but it's not always the best way to analyze things.

 

You want a demographic trend that will be of vital importance to the next 30 years of elections?  Watch the Hispanic vote.  Highly volatile, no firm party affiliation, lots of ability to change.

Agree that a more detailed argument would be better, but this is USA Today, not a refereed journal. You'd never get anything published in a paper where the first paragraph explains what a CMSA is.

 

But I think you're wrong in seeing this argument as Democrat vs Republican. The Dems simply wouldn't allow themselves to become a permanent minority, they'd shift the party's platform towards the conservative 'end' of the spectrum if the population shifted. So you wouldn't necessarily see any change in party dominance, but you would definitely see a change in policy.

 

And in that sense, I think it's an interesting argument. I'm not sure how important it is, quantitatively, but I'm not as convinced as you are that it's minor.

[bmags]

why was utah used? I'd like to see Texas vs. california...and despite that for maybe 8 years of that kids life as a conservative he may be liberal and if the lazy ass kids my age ever get up to vote then the dems still have that. I'm more worried about the implications that this really means : more larry the cable guy fans are being born than david cross fans. scaaarryyyyy.

 

^last part joke.

[mr_genius]

good article

 

i've actually thought about this issue before