Say Anything Blog

This is bad....why?

47,000,000 people is a significant chunk of the populace. A whole lot of voters that could be voting Democrat but aren’t.

Does this happen often? Probably not--but it’s wrong to say that abortion alone is responsible for 47 million fewer people. It’s like saying condoms are responsible for a billion fewer people.

It’s like saying condoms are responsible for a billion fewer people.

Or abstinenence, for that matter. They’re all used so couples can choose when to have their children. I think feminism--which led to a big increase in female employment--plays a much bigger role here than abortion in declining liberal birth -rates.

Probably because the liberals practice poor hygiene.

A ridiculous collision of assumptions and numbers.

Which way do the hybrids vote?

The hand that rocks the cradle
is the hand that rules the world.

William Ross Wallace

Hey Woof, people would probably take you seriously if you put down the bong pipe once in a while and just said what you meant.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

In order to draw conclusions from a statistacal sample you have to recognize the aberations.
M/F, C/L, age of sampled, fertility by religion, economic class. i.e. respondent 75 year olds are not having many babies.

First Lib/Cons are sited then Dems/Rep, not the same thing. Whither goes the moderates?

WSJ is just trying to give the right some hope in this difficult time.

Always put the bong down after you have imbibed the beer in it.

Dave: Don’t forget that as people become older and more prosperous, they tend to get more conservative.  Just another factor supporting the original theme.

If you don’t know by now, don’t mess with it.

Don’t forget that as people become older and more prosperous,

And more smarter.

they tend to get more conservative

And more smarter.

LOL

put down the bong pipe once in a while

Yeah, try a vaporizer. They’re much more effecient and healthier too.

WOOF is just blowing smoke.  The fertility gap between liberals & conservatives, or equivalently between Democrats and Republicans has been noticed for several years now.

One influence that has been discussed is the much higher proportion of abortions by liberal women compared to conservative ones, for example, see here. Note that this was dated before the 2004 elections.

Another effect is that rural areas, which also run more conservative & republican, have higher birth rates than populated ones.  See for example this.  The amount of stress in your environment also tends to negatively affect your physical and mental health, so it’s no surprising that when you look at political leanings (keeping in mind the rural/urban demographic) you get biases showing up in mental illnesses as well, see also here

While there may be problems with how the result gets expressed (is it really liberal/conservative or urban/rural for example), I think the fundamental facts are correct on this one.  Liberals in the US are following the lead of liberals in the EU and simply not maintaining their gene pool.

I think the fundamental facts are correct on this one. Liberals in the US are following the lead of liberals in the EU and simply not maintaining their gene pool.

Carrick that one link came suspiciously close to a Michael Savage book title.

I may take some flak for saying it , but…

THIS to me seems perfectly obvious to me. I think is has more to do with your typical blue state been more economically advance than your typical average Red State.  ..the same correlations can be seen among developing/developed countries (e.g. China, India vs. Europe, US) and even here in the US among ethinicity depending on their economic advancement (e.g. Whites vs. Hispanics)

...RED States tend to have more of an “old school"/traditional economy (mining/mineral extraction, agriculture) than do Blue State which tend to dominate the higher value added sectors of our economy (financial services(NYC, etc)/ biotech(including pharmaceutical, Boston, etc), Internet (Silicon Valley, etc)

The liberal baby bust
By Phillip Longman
from USA Today
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.

By Sam Ward, USA TODAY

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.

Phillip Longman is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It. This essay is adapted from his cover story in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

aNONOMISLY:

THIS to me seems perfectly obvious to me. I think is has more to do with your typical blue state been more economically advance than your typical average Red State.

That’s just another way of framing urban versus rural, if you ask me.  California, for example, is a bunch of blue urban islands surrounded by red rural countryside.

Of course not all blue areas are affluent.  For example inner cities tend to be blue, and very poor rural areas, like the Missisisippi Delta, are blue as well.

So just framing it as economically advanced is too simplistic.

Carrick: Are there really degrees of being simplistic?  Just a silly question.

If you don’t know by now, don’t mess with it.