(POL) The Political Fertility Gap?

[MalcPow]

I had a friend forward this on to me and I thought it was at least a somewhat interesting read. The writer is working on a book that makes the argument that compassionate and religious conservatives really are more compassionate and giving than secular or liberal Americans, so you can assume he's slightly more than a detached observer, but the data is still food for thought.

The Fertility Gap
Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply.

BY ARTHUR C. BROOKS
Tuesday, August 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

The midterm election looms, and once again efforts begin afresh to increase voter participation. It has become standard wisdom in American politics that voter turnout is synonymous with good citizenship, justifying just about any scheme to get people to the polls. Arizona is even considering a voter lottery, in which all voters are automatically registered for a $1 million giveaway. Polling places and liquor stores in Arizona will now have something in common.

On the political left, raising the youth vote is one of the most common goals. This implicitly plays to the tired old axiom that a person under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart (whereas one who is still a liberal after 30 has no head). The trouble is, while most "get out the vote" campaigns targeting young people are proxies for the Democratic Party, these efforts haven't apparently done much to win elections for the Democrats. The explanation we often hear from the left is that the new young Democrats are more than counterbalanced by voters scared up by the Republicans on "cultural issues" like abortion, gun rights and gay marriage.

But the data on young Americans tell a different story. Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.

The fertility gap doesn't budge when we correct for factors like age, income, education, sex, race--or even religion. Indeed, if a conservative and a liberal are identical in all these ways, the liberal will still be 19 percentage points more likely to be childless than the conservative. Some believe the gap reflects an authentic cultural difference between left and right in America today. As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation." It would appear liberals have been quite successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party.

Of course, politics depends on a lot more than underlying ideology. People vote for politicians, not parties. Lots of people are neither liberal nor conservative, but rather vote on the basis of personalities and specific issues. But all things considered, if the Democrats continue to appeal to liberals and the Republicans to conservatives, getting out the youth vote may be increasingly an exercise in futility for the American left.

Democratic politicians may have no more babies left to kiss.

Mr. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, is the author of "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," forthcoming from Basic Books.

[QuikSand]

Complete hack from a second-rate "college." Dismiss anything you hear from an alumnus of that program.

[Klinglerware]

Heh heh, monocausality.

Just switch the demographic and voter trend data from "liberal/conservative" to "minority/majority" and the conclusion changes considerably.

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Complete hack from a second-rate "college." Dismiss anything you hear from an alumnus of that program.

Consider it dismissed. (And I completely agree about Syracuse, crappy education, third-rate basketball team, just an embarassing institution really .)

And yeah his "conclusions" about states becoming more and more red with every passing year are a little too neat and simple, but even taken as just one of a number of factors, a gap that large is going to have some cultural impact over time. He's obviously taking things to an extreme, but you'd have to think that numbers like this (unless Quik is basically saying we shouldn't even trust base numbers from this guy) would, all else being equal, cause things to trend in a more conservative direction. I mean it is a democracy, if you can't change hearts and minds, just make a few more.

[QuikSand]

Admittedly, one would have to agree that it shoudl be easier to change hearts and minds when you get them for 18 years or so right out of the chute.

[cuervo72]

"Wanton breeding". Hah, love it. I also think that overpopulation (later in that quote) itself isn't necessarily a problem, it's how we deal with the people. There seems to be more than enough space on the earth and plenty of resources, it's the distribution (and lack thereof) of these that is a little skewed. Same goes for waste management, pollution, etc (this is not a "less people = best" solution, it's just that things would need to run more efficiently). I suppose this is a whole argument in and of itself though.

[flere-imsaho]

Yes, but don't all kids want to be the opposite of their parents?

[digamma]

It would certainly help the Dems if they could find a way for all of those homosexuals to start having kids.

[MrBigglesworth]

Babies aren't the only way our population increases: immigrants come into the country in waves, and trend Democratic. The analysis is rediculous: he says that this fertility gap has been over 20% for the past 30 years (so the assumption is made that conservatives have been outbreeding libs for even longer), and says that in 8 years a 50/50 state will swing 8 pts. So what happened during the past 8 years? In 1996, exit polls showed that 20% of people described themselves as liberal, while 33% described themselves as conservative. In 2004, 21% described themselves as liberal, while 34% described themselves as conservative, virtually no change.

[flere-imsaho]

rIdiculous

sheesh....

[MalcPow]

I'm not really all that interested in his analysis, he's clearly got an agenda or a heavily colored worldview, but I find the size of the gap fascinating, especially if it actually isn't affected by income, education, and the other factors that he lists. Assuming the data is accurate (which may be too large an assumption), and this gap actually exists, what does that mean? We seem to be saying so far that it doesn't mean anything as far as future political environments, either because immigrants will balance things or the correlation between parent-child belief structures isn't so cut and dry. I think both of those are true to a certain extent, but that gap seems pretty big, enough so that it seems like there's still going to be some residual impact even after correcting for those other factors.

And I guess the other issue is less of a what does this mean for the future, and more of a what does this say about yesterday and today. Why are liberals having fewer kids? I would not have guessed that, controlling for income and other factors, this would be the case and it seems like an interesting question to me. I'm not quite sure where to go with it, but it seems like the difference is significant enough that there's something fairly apparent that separates the two groups on this issue.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by MalcPow

Why are liberals having fewer kids?

Throwing political correctness and similar sensitivities to the wind, here are a few thoughts:

-I strongly suspect that there is a liberal skew of career-minded women, overall. So, families with two career earners, who are more likely to hold off on having kids and probably have fewer as a result, are probably more likely to be on the political left than the rest of the public.

-Similarly, there's probably a reverse skew among the "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant" crowd of males, as that group is more likely to be on the political right. If part of the espoused plan is pregnant, then that might tend toward more kids. Kids are something to do, after all, if nothing else.

-Many with religious views against birth control (and demographically more likely to have lots of kids) are likely to be politically aligned with the so-called religious right. I don't know how the demographics of immigration play into this, but the predominantly Catholic immigrant population has not been as reliably Democratic as it once was, especially with the political gay bashing and other stuff that passes for "family values" of late.

[MrBigglesworth]

The author may also make a correlation/causality error: having kids often makes you more conservative.

I have to question also the analysis that says that the normalized gap is the same as the actual gap. That implies that either things like age and religion have no effect on the number of children (which I am almost sure isn't true), or that their effects exactly cancel each other out (which seems unlikely).

[cuervo72]

Just to throw this in the mix:

Differences by Race and Ethnicity

In 2004, Hispanic women had the highest fertility rates, followed by non-Hispanic black women and Asian women. Fertility rates for Hispanic women were about 45 percent higher than those for non-Hispanic black women and Asian women (98 births per 1,000 for Hispanic women versus 67 births per 1,000 for black and Asian women), and more than 60 percent higher than those for women in all other racial and ethnic groups. Non-Hispanic white women and Native American women had the lowest fertility rates (58 and 59 births per 1,000 women, respectively, in 2004). (See Figure 3)
Among Hispanic women, Mexican woman have a much higher fertility rate than Puerto Rican and Cuban woman (106 births per 1,000 compared with 62 births per 1,000 and 62 births per 1,000, respectively, in 2003, the latest year for which such data are available). (See Table 1)

http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/i...BirthRates.cfm

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Throwing political correctness and similar sensitivities to the wind, here are a few thoughts:

-I strongly suspect that there is a liberal skew of career-minded women, overall. So, families with two career earners, who are more likely to hold off on having kids and probably have fewer as a result, are probably more likely to be on the political left than the rest of the public.

-Similarly, there's probably a reverse skew among the "keep 'em barefoot and pregnant" crowd of males, as that group is more likely to be on the political right. If part of the espoused plan is pregnant, then that might tend toward more kids. Kids are something to do, after all, if nothing else.

-Many with religious views against birth control (and demographically more likely to have lots of kids) are likely to be politically aligned with the so-called religious right. I don't know how the demographics of immigration play into this, but the predominantly Catholic immigrant population has not been as reliably Democratic as it once was, especially with the political gay bashing and other stuff that passes for "family values" of late.

All good points, although he does say that religious beliefs did not impact the gap, I guess the assumption is that those that take the birth control stances of their particular religion a little more seriously are probably conservative (which makes some sense based on my experience).

We'd also have to see how things were normalized or controlled with regard to income. If they use a family income number then the "barefoot and pregnant" theory probably makes a lot of sense, if it's individual income though, then that doesn't work out as well. I'm guessing we won't get good answers to those questions, but there they are.

[JPhillips]

When you have a scientist that presents conclusions that match his ideological biases don't trust any of it until you see the raw data.

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

When you have a scientist that presents conclusions that match his ideological biases don't trust any of it until you see the raw data.

That's true. Although in this case I think that the data is what it is, but the analysis is incomplete (unintentional or not).

Remember, the ultimate DV here is the tendency to vote for either party. He is using the liberal/conservative dimension as a proxy for this tendency (a reasonable one for this exercise--we'll cut the guy some slack and leave the possibility that the correlation of liberalism/conservativism and party choice will drift over time out of this). The crux of his analysis rests on estimating changes in future demographic trends on that one dimension and the resultant effect on voting patterns assuming voting tendencies within that dimension are held constant. That's all well and good, but the analysis ignores other possible demographic shifts in other dimensions (e.g. ethnic makeup) that may be just as, if not more, significant.

Obviously, a better way to do it would be to run it on multiple demographic characteristics and see where the largest changes are. But then again, the study assumptions (e.g., voting patterns within each dimensional "bucket" will remain constant) and the necessity of projecting future changes in demographics already render this a shaky exercise.

[MalcPow]

Originally Posted by Klinglerware

That's true. Although in this case I think that the data is what it is, but the analysis is incomplete (unintentional or not).

Remember, the ultimate DV here is the tendency to vote for either party. He is using the liberal/conservative dimension as a proxy for this tendency (a reasonable one for this exercise--we'll cut the guy some slack and leave the possibility that the correlation of liberalism/conservativism and party choice will drift over time out of this). The crux of his analysis rests on estimating changes in future demographic trends on that one dimension and the resultant effect on voting patterns assuming voting tendencies within that dimension are held constant. That's all well and good, but the analysis ignores other possible demographic shifts in other dimensions (e.g. ethnic makeup) that may be just as, if not more, significant.

Obviously, a better way to do it would be to run it on multiple demographic characteristics and see where the largest changes are. But then again, the study assumptions (e.g., voting patterns within each dimensional "bucket" will remain constant) and the necessity of projecting future changes in demographics already render this a shaky exercise.

He says the gap, or the ratio, doesn't budge with regard to race, so demographic ethnic shifts wouldn't seem to affect the overall result. That this gap is so consistent regardless of all these different factors does seem intuitively out of whack, but I can't really explain it all that well if I try to dig a little deeper with my thinking.

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by MalcPow

He says the gap, or the ratio, doesn't budge with regard to race, so demographic ethnic shifts wouldn't seem to affect the overall result. That this gap is so consistent regardless of all these different factors does seem intuitively out of whack, but I can't really explain it all that well if I try to dig a little deeper with my thinking.

Ah yes, now I see it in the text. The results would be very powerful if he did manage to equivalize by race over time. As you say, intuitively it just doesn't make sense and I would like to see his methodology. I would suspect that the equivalization was done on present day demographics--in that case, all he is really claiming is that the "fertility gap" does not wash out when other factors that may skew the result are taken out of the equation. Again, a reasonable thing to say.

But, I suspect that once he got the equivalized fertility rates, he was still trending them out in isolation. The article didn't say whether he accounted for the possibility of future shifts on other demographic variables.

This is of course conjecture on my part. Without reading the study, we don't know what he did exactly. Maybe he did take other future trends into account, but my best guess is that he didn't.

[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by MalcPow

He says the gap, or the ratio, doesn't budge with regard to race, so demographic ethnic shifts wouldn't seem to affect the overall result.

"Past performance not necessarily indicative of future results."

Plus, he has no statistical evidence whatsoever that the union of conservative parents produces conservative offspring. Nor does he have any statistical data to indicate changes in political ideology over time in individuals (ironic, given his paraphrasing of Churchill's famous quote).

It's a lot like UFOs: you want it to be true, the surface evidence makes it look like it's true, but it's not true.

[MalcPow]

Ha, yeah I don't really want or have much interest in his analysis coming to fruition, I'm just having a more difficult time dismissing the whole as useless noise.

[Klinglerware]

Originally Posted by MalcPow

Ha, yeah I don't really want or have much interest in his analysis coming to fruition, I'm just having a more difficult time dismissing the whole as useless noise.

No, it's not completely noise-the "fertility gap" is probably a statistically significant finding. However, the finding is on one demographic variable. Unless he looks at the birthrate-voting relationship on other dimensions, he hasn't really demostrated that this finding has much explanatory power in and of itself.

[King of New York]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Throwing political correctness and similar sensitivities to the wind, here are a few thoughts:

-I strongly suspect that there is a liberal skew of career-minded women, overall. So, families with two career earners, who are more likely to hold off on having kids and probably have fewer as a result, are probably more likely to be on the political left than the rest of the public.

Bingo. I know quite a few childless couples, and in every case, the decision not to have children was rooted in career considerations--the husband and wife decided to pursue their careers at full throttle instead of stepping onto the mommy and daddy track. It's true that they also are politically liberal, but I think that their liberalism and childlessness are correlated, not "cause-and-effect."

The idea that these couples decided not to have kids because they wanted to spare the world from overpopulation is ridiculous.

Come to think of it, those families I know that have four or more kids all have stay-at-home moms and tend to be politically conservative.

I suspect that the guy's basic observation (liberals tend to have fewer or no kids, conservatives tend to have more) is probably correct--though I agree that it would be foolish to predict future political trends from breeding patterns.

[SackAttack]

One thing I'd point out on the author's premise here is that while conservatives may, as a whole, have more babies than liberals, I think it's a pretty safe bet that there's also an ethnic fertility gap.

Meaning states with high Latino populations may continue to turn out high numbers of liberals on a local level, even as liberals as a whole fail to keep pace with their right-wing counterparts.

California solidly Republican in 15 years? I'd eat SkyDog's patriotic underpants if that happened.