The Liberal Fertility Gap

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 | Population |

Arthur Brooks in the WSJ’s OpinionJournal:

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.

On a related note: “John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.”

5 Comments to The Liberal Fertility Gap

CE Petro
August 23, 2006

That fertility gap is crapola. I said as much. The idea of missing babies has een used to justify things like crime — i.e. the crime rate is lower because of all the aborted babies.

Brooks doesn’t take into account independents, a growing political segment. He doesn’t take into account voter apathy, which I suspect there is a significant amount of young people that don’t vote just so they don’t get into fights with their families. (I hear this all too often from friends of my kids, and I am extrapolating that this is a fairly common reason, although it may not be verbalized)

My conclusion of Brooks theory — it’s wishful thinking on his part.

ANGRYWOLF
August 23, 2006

Hmmm well we know Rush Limbaugh and AnnCoulter can have a baby, we know he wasn’t taking that viagra to Costa Rica for nothing and then we liberals will really be in trouble.Smile.

Bill
August 24, 2006

He’s also not taking into account the vast new democrat hunting ground - currently illegal immigrants, as well as the growth rate of the general hispanic population, many of whom are illegal immigrant sympathizers, votes which may go to the left.

Les Jones
August 24, 2006

CE Petro: I think the lower crime rate is, in part, due not just to abortion but to young people being a smaller percentage of the population. Most crime is committed by young people, and if there are fewer of them, then there’s less crime. (This is obviously not a plea for having fewer children. I’m just illustrating a point about demographics and how they shape societies.)

Bill: I think you’ve got something there, though outsourcing your reproduction to another group is not really a great idea. To take one example, most Democrats are pro-choice, but most Hispanics are Catholic.

Christopher Range
August 25, 2006

My wife’s family on her mother’s side are Hispanics from Puerto Rico and Cuba. It’s a huge family and they are very tight even by Southern standards. What I’ve noticed over the last 16 years is that the majority of the family are religious and strong social conservatives. The men are very patriotic and a number of them have served in the military. She has a couple of uncles and 4 cousins who “owe” Castro a combined total of about 47 years in jail — this on account of them escaping the country in the 1960s. To a one these relatives are social conservatives. Most are Republicans.

The oldest of the family have been in the US for more than 40 years. The second and third generations have enculturated as both Spanish and Anglo. They use English in public and Spanish in the home. They enjoy the economic growth we have here in the sunbelt and I have to observe, they have a lot of babies.

Personally, I love being a part of the family. Politically, I hope Castro is gone soon. But I also hope that the family stays here and continues voting Republican. Finally, I hope they keep having babies. Lots and lots of babies.