Liberal Birth Dearth
Regular readers may have already inferred that I am fascinated by demographics. So I enjoyed this piece at WSJ.com by Arthur C. Brooks, who uses survey data to show that conservatives have more babies than liberals. He presses the statistics, moreover, into the service of demonstrating that the trend bodes ill for Democratic Party political success.
Taken completely seriously, there are problems with the analysis—for example, what “liberal” and “conservative” mean with respect both to survey answers and to politics—but taken light-heartedly, it’s a collection of interesting data points inventively presented. Here’s the key stat:
Taken completely seriously, there are problems with the analysis—for example, what “liberal” and “conservative” mean with respect both to survey answers and to politics—but taken light-heartedly, it’s a collection of interesting data points inventively presented. Here’s the key stat:
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.
Comments
#1 2006-08-24 00:27 (Reply)
Interesting. The article’s statement that “80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up” doesn’t surprise me, but I wonder if that means the remaining 20% might tend to drift more leftwards to even out the demographic shift to the right?
#1.1 2006-08-24 06:37 (Reply)
Right, the 20 percent does even things out somewhat. But, as I read the article, his predictions of the impact on future voting patterns take into account the 80-20 split. That is, even with 20 percent of “conservative kids” peeling away, Ohio will shift to 54 to 46, etc. The birth rate is that lopsided.