November 20, 2012

"Tell Me a State’s Fertility Rate, and I’ll Tell You How It Voted"

My December 20, 2004 article in The American Conservative introduced the concept of the "Baby Gap" in American voting.

From New York Magazine:
Tell Me a State’s Fertility Rate, and I’ll Tell You How It Voted 
BY LAUREN SANDLER

Grumbling GOP commentators and reveling feminists finally agree on something: This was the year when single ladies helped to deck the White House in blue. But another, even more powerful feminine factor was at play in this election, as it has been in races past: Almost invisibly over the past decade, family size in America has emerged as our deepest political dividing line.

Stunningly, the postponement of marriage and parenting — the factors that shrink the birth rate — is the very best predictor of a person’s politics in the United States, over even income and education levels, a Belgian demographer named Ron Lesthaeghe has discovered.

Actually, Professor Lesthaeghe has graciously conceded that I beat him to this discovery by a year or so, as I pointed out in this 2006 VDARE.com article.
Larger family size in America correlates to early marriage and childbirth, lower women’s employment, and opposition to gay rights — all social factors that lead voters to see red.

Actually, it's white fertility that correlates with Republican voting by state. For example, California, the biggest state, has moderate overall fertility, but votes solidly Democratic. It has low white fertility.
The converse, according to futurist Joel Kotkin, marks “the rise of post-familialism,” overturning the notion that a woman's life requires a wedding dress and at least two kids to dutifully rear. David Brooks devoted a column to this report Friday, and his reaction demonstrates the red blood spilling over our shift to a freer attitude toward life and family choices. “...

Here's Brooks's 2004 NYT column touting my research, for which he was systematically denounced for guilt by association.
Americans are increasingly rejecting traditional conservative power structures — the old models of authoritarian Church and State — as Europeans have for decades. “It’s amazing how once you get rid of obedience to the authority of institutions so much simply falls away,” Lesthaeghe told me over coffee at a conference in Vienna last year. He went on to predict that, despite the GOP backlash against it, American’s adaptation toward a more liberal way of living could only encourage a political shift to the left. You could see this destiny manifested in last Tuesday’s vote: in Maine, for marriage equality; in New Hampshire, for a completely woman-governed state for the first time in American history; in Massachusetts, for progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren; and so on.

Warren strikes me as somebody sympathetic to the struggles of couples hoping to be able to afford to form a family. But, what do I know? Here's my 2003 VDARE.com review of a book by her.
Yet, for all those social measures on the 2012 ballot, our near-continental divide of politics and fertility was even more distinct during the Bush era, before the New York Times had added the “celebrations” category to its still-hetero wedding listings. Despite the rampant conservatism of that time, there was no rape caucus to combat; the Evangelical block was country strong. In the 2004 presidential election, while swift boats sailed cross the headlines, fertility rates in states that voted for Bush were 12 percent higher than they were in states that picked Kerry. When Lesthaeghe studied the map county by county, he found the link between family size and political leaning became even stronger. This morning, he sent me an e-mail to say he still has to check the county results from this election, but once again, he expects the same granular correlation, "no surprises, judging from the state-level results." 
Since then, the polarization has weakened slightly. While voting in 2008 fell clearly along fertility lines, demographer Phillip Morgan found in examining the fertility of “MSNBC v. Fox News” audiences liberals' post-Obama glow engendered the optimism needed to have a kid in a crushing recession. 
Conversely, a red outlook no longer meant a rosy one to the snarling cynics at Fox: Subsequently, conservatives began to consider larger, and therefore more expensive, families to be an increasing impossibility. Low birth rates aren’t really about freedom but fear, Morgan believes. “People put off having kids,” which leads to sinking fertility, he told me, “because they’re really frightened about the future.”

Indeed.
With liberal fertility on the rise

Hispanic fertility, and that has dropped sharply since 2008.
, the predictive power of family size finds itself waning. As our demographics change, that county-by-county correlation that was so absolute ten years ago is beginning to yield to a purple reign. Celinda Lake, one of the Democratic party’s leading pollsters and strategists, who predicted the single ladies swing well before the exit polls, told me our future partisan fertility map is being redrawn. She says that as birth rates rise amongst women of color who vote consistently Democrat, the states working blue may make a radical turn to become our most fertile ones.

Right, but that's why I focused on white fertility in 2004.
“We’re on the verge of a dramatic shift. It will be a different conversation ten years from now,” Lake told me, estimating that the predictive power of fertility will last until 2020, but not much longer.

But that would be because whites are increasingly swamped in the electorate.
And with an increasingly liberal bloc of mothers — like the ones who renewed Obama’s lease on the Oval Office in massive numbers — perhaps it’s not impossible to imagine electing a woman who opted for her own one-child family so she could dedicate herself to a world outside the home. A low-fertility politic doesn't mean no fertility; it doesn't mean refusing motherhood. Rather, it supports a woman’s choice to “shut it down,” to borrow a recent turn of phrase. It speaks to an ethic of an inclusive, extra-domestic life. 

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

In fairness, Spengler beat you by about a month.

Matthew said...

Of course the Left is destroying this country with immigration for the purpose of saving us with leftism. You know that, right?

Marriage and abortion rates also correlate with state politics. In 2004, 8 of the 10 states with the highest abortion rates voted for Kerry. I forget what I found with regards to marriage rates, but it was similar.

Anonymous said...

Steve, what do you think of the possibility of Mexican fertility cratering even further? Isn't there a very good possibility it'll end up where the other medium-to-high income Catholic countries are? 1.4-1.5 kids per family?

Anonymous said...

In California its mainly the Bay area with real low birthrates
for whites and La is joining them because of hipster whites. Actually Kern, Orange County and San Diego until the recession crash had white birthrates closed to the national average. In fact most evangelicals have about 2 kids not that high only a small group has 4 or more among them its just liberals and enviromentalists prefer to have a smaller group of kids. And people like Ann Counter and Monica Crawley are those on the right that don't want kids as well.

Prophet said...

Demography is destiny.

That is all.

Whiskey said...

Like I said, Whites have to be realistic. This is Northern Greater Mexico now. No question it is. And the nuclear family, monogamy, marriage, is not coming back. Ever. Women having tasted freedom to pursue Alpha males up through their thirties, are not going to settle for some doofus who doesn't turn on all their friends, or who doesn't order people around. But instead works for a living Mon-Fri. That's the mark of loserdom.

So being realistic, it is imperative to have a White fertility rate as high as possible. This means teen pregnancies, and continued pregnancies. Thats what matters. Nothing else. Getting as many White kids means focusing on that only. It means discarding a lot of the moral values, behaviors, and so on that create wealth, but again being realistic, creating wealth in Greater Northern Mexico just means doing so ... and then handing it over to La Raza and their allies, who take a 90% cut and pass on 10% to the masses of Mexicans.

As far as Warren goes, she's part of the problem, and a symptom of the rot. She's childless, claimed to be American Indian, laughably, got to Harvard because of it, and got elected because White women voters loved her shtick. She's a tribune of the wealth political crony class, and wants to turn Mass. into a colder Mexico herself. The better to lord it over other, the "wrong sort" of White people.

Anonymous said...

Two other points:

1) A few years ago, I started to notice that it was becoming much more difficult to get your hands on this information [my guess is that there were some Frankfurt School types, deep in the bowels of the gubmint, who perked up and took notice as to what you and Spengler were up to, and decided to nip it in the bud by burying the statistics from public view].

2) I also noticed that there were small but statistically significant differences between the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control as regarded estimates of the number of infants in the country.

[The CDC is reponsible for compiling the live birth numbers.]

One obvious explanation would be that the illegals were bringing hundreds of thousands of newborns across the border with them [so that the births would have been recorded in Central America, rather than in the USA], but I got the distinct impression that the Census Bureau was artificially inflating the numbers for political purposes.

Anonymous said...

'so she could dedicate herself to a world outside the home.'

world inside a factory, office building, or warehouse.

Anonymous said...

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/11/20/all-housing-indicators-now-looking-up/

If there are so many empty homes, why are they building more houses?

Anonymous said...

For all the tut-tutting about white fertility, in the southern San Fernando Valley I'm surrounded by upper middle class whites with three and four kids each. Sure, they're counterbalanced by the ones with none at all, but there seems to be a very quiet natalism taking hold among blue state whites.

Anonymous said...

The evidence is in: Steve Sailer is a creepy obsessive.

What kind of guy makes ten consecutive posts, every single one of them loaded with statistics, on exactly the same shit? It's like that charactter, "Pointdexter", from "Revenge Of The Nerds", except WORSE.

You know who also votes Republican? Members of the Atlas Society, people who are against religion, against only heterpsexuals having the right to start families, and pro mass immigration and open boarders.

You can find all kinds of patterns that you want, and make them fit the mold you want to fit them in. Those same white married people who vote Republican might be strong supporters of immigration because a lot of married couples are petit bourgeoise and benefit from having maids, as well as much cheaper services. The lower classes, that are the ones most opposed to immigration, get less and less married and, thus, married people would not represent the bulk of those who vote Republican.

Hence, your "marriage gap" theory is doodle windle.

Steve Sailer said...

"For all the tut-tutting about white fertility, in the southern San Fernando Valley I'm surrounded by upper middle class whites with three and four kids each."

In the three houses that adjoin my yard, five children have been born in the last half decade.

Steve Sailer said...

"In fairness, Spengler beat you by about a month."

Way back on July 20, 2000, I wrote in VDARE:

"Our most liberal state, Vermont (which is represented in Congress by Socialist Bernie Sanders), has the lowest birthrate at only 1.57 babies per woman. In contrast, our most socially conservative state, Mormon-dominated Utah, has the highest fertility at 2.71. That's 73% more babies per woman. At this rate, if Utah and Vermont had equal populations today and there was no migration in or out of either state, in two generations there would be three times more children in Utah than in Vermont."

Anonymous said...

"As far as Warren goes, she's part of the problem, and a symptom of the rot. She's childless, claimed to be American Indian..."

Elizabeth Warren has two kids and several grandchildren. She's written two books with her daughter. Is there anything you're NOT wrong about?

Anonymous said...

"In the three houses that adjoin my yard, five children have been born in the last half decade."

Is that a lot or a little?

White or not, isn't it the case that where women can get advanced education and careers fertility drops? I don't know a whole lot of working women with more than 2 kids. Though maybe it's just my environment.

Hail said...

"At this rate, if Utah and Vermont had equal populations today and there was no migration in or out of either state, in two generations there would be three times more children in Utah than in Vermont."

Half a century from now, the White-American population may be fast approaching 10% Amish and 10% Mormon, if those groups maintain their current fertility rates indefinitely.

Thomas said...

"And with an increasingly liberal bloc of mothers — like the ones who renewed Obama’s lease on the Oval Office in massive numbers — perhaps it’s not impossible to imagine electing a woman who opted for her own one-child family so she could dedicate herself to a world outside the home." LOL wut? The model for the single mothers they're talking about isn't Murphy Brown but that minimum-wage single mother of two in Ohio from that Times article earlier in the year who was compared to her married counterpart as an example of how far single motherhood sets women and children back in terms of inequality.

anony-mouse said...

If so many Whites are having so many children how come they're being demographically wiped out?

Rev. Right said...

Ms. Sandler displays a remarkable ability to take an interesting idea and completely misrepresent in a way to fit the liberal orthodoxy, even expanding it into a glorious vision of the ascendance of the single female demographic to utter political dominance, all while getting in plenty of gratuitous digs at the kind of people who watch Fox News.

The readership of New York Magazine demands confirmation of their misconceptions, and Lauren Sandler is there to deliver. Atta girl.

Beecher Asbury said...

If so many Whites are having so many children how come they're being demographically wiped out?

Because the USA takes in over 1 million LEGAL immigrants each year who are overwhelmingly nonwhite. And they have been doing this for about 40 years. Add to that the illegals that get in and have anchor babies, and you simply have too much to overcome even if whites are having a reasonable amount of children.

As a comparison look at immigration from 1925 to 1965 when we were under the Immigration Act of 1924. During this period we only took in around 180K immigrants per year. This was also the time of the post war baby boom.

Now you have 7 to 10 times the immigration levels, legal and illegal combined, and white fertility is not near the baby boom years. So it is not hard to see why they are being replaced.

Beecher Asbury said...

Like I said, Whites have to be realistic. This is Northern Greater Mexico now. No question it is. And the nuclear family, monogamy, marriage, is not coming back. Ever. Women having tasted freedom to pursue Alpha males up through their thirties, are not going to settle for some doofus who doesn't turn on all their friends, or who doesn't order people around. But instead works for a living Mon-Fri. That's the mark of loserdom.

So being realistic, it is imperative to have a White fertility rate as high as possible. This means teen pregnancies, and continued pregnancies. Thats what matters. Nothing else



Whiskey, maybe you could set up some modern day Lebensborn program and allow alphas like you to impregnate as many white women as possible who could then go to these special maternity homes and not have to deal with social scorn. Or would that conflict with your Judeophilia ?

Anonyia said...

This trend isn't exact. Alabama and West Virginia are red state outliers with relatively low fertility rates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_fertility_rate

Matthew said...

Because the USA takes in over 1 million LEGAL immigrants each year who are overwhelmingly nonwhite.

This is compounded by the fact that probably an overwhelming majority of immigrants are of childbearing age, but many or most have not yet begun to have children. They wind up comprising a disproportionate share of the childbearing population of the US. Whether uneducated immigrants from Mexico, or educated immigrants from India, what we import, essentially, is a ticking fertility bomb.

"So being realistic, it is imperative to have a White fertility rate as high as possible. This means teen pregnancies, and continued pregnancies."

Oh bullshit. Having a child in your teens reduces long-term fertility, at least for whites. White women who have children as teenagers have fewer children, long-term, than white women who begin having children in their early twenties. Plus it makes you look like a skank ho, even if you aren't. Go to college, stay reasonably chaste, date a guy you want to marry, get a degree, marry ASAP after college, don't eff around pursuing a graduate degree - that is the path to maximum fertility (and happiness, if surveys are to be believed).

Dr. Raven said...

"If so many Whites are having so many children how come they're being demographically wiped out?"

You gotta stop thinking in terms of 'whites'. The reason why white demographics seems depressed is because too many white liberals don't have lots of kids. But if white cons have lots of kids, white cons can eventually win.
Look, if white conservative women have 4 kids each, their population will double exponentially every 35 yrs.
So, never mind the overall white demographics. Just focus on the CORE white conservative demographics. White liberals are race traitors anyway.

It's what the Orthodox Jews understand. Secular Jews may not have lots of kids, but Orthodox Jews have lots of kids. Eventually orthodox Jews will become the majority of the Jewish community.

All white conservatives should think like Mormons. Mormons don't think of the white community as a whole. Why, that would be demoralizing since too many whites don't have kids and have no sense of values. White Mormons focus on Mormon numbers, and since Mormon numbers are rising, they keep having babies. As long as they focus on the growing Mormon community, they are filled with pride and a sense of community.

Similarly, white cons should forget about the 'white race' as a whole, and think in terms of 'white conservative race'. As long as white conservatives have lots of kids, the future will belong to them.

Anonymous said...

Instead of increasing white births decease hispanic births. Hispanics are in blue and purple states with the exception of Arizona and Texas. Liberals love to get birthrates down. So allow liberals to tell Mexican kids in California which they have already since teen births have actually dropped there a lot to continue to have less babies for the good of the enviroment. Liberals willl pushed down Santa Ana from 8.9 to Mission Viejo 4.8 average for 5 year olds.

Mannerheim said...

"BY LAUREN SANDLER"

I think I detect Steve's First Law of Female Journalism here, no doubt Ms. Sandler is either childless or is guilty about spending so much time on her career instead of raising her kids.

Other than that it's just more rah-rah cheerleading for women who slut it up in the big city and work meaningless paper-pushing office jobs instead of starting a family. We've already seen the first salvo of articles about "I DON'T REGRET MY CHOICES EVEN THOUGH I'M GOING TO DIE ALONE", look for the avalanche to pick up in coming years.

Anonymous said...

I think I detect Steve's First Law of Female Journalism here, no doubt Ms. Sandler is either childless or is guilty about spending so much time on her career instead of raising her kids.

"I’m Lauren Sandler, a journalist and author...I’ve reported on a range of topics from women’s rights in Iraq to the cover story for Time that led to my current book, One and Only. I’m an only child, and the mother of one. As a reporter I wanted to investigate what it means to have more of us, and why we seem so damned for it, as parents and children. In the book—and here online—I question our assumptions, and consider whether stopping at one might be liberating to parents everywhere. You’ll be surprised at what I’ve learned. (I might have even cracked the code of motherhood and modernity.)"
-laurensandler.com

Not so far off...

Anonymous said...

"Similarly, white cons should forget about the 'white race' as a whole, and think in terms of 'white conservative race'. As long as white conservatives have lots of kids, the future will belong to them."

It's amazing how many conservatives seem to think political alignment is as heritable as eye color. As if there are no conservatives with kids who turn liberal as soon as they go off to college or realize they're gay or simply have more sensitivity than a stone.

So by all means, conservatives. Have lots of kids. The brainy and sensitive ones will end up as the next generation of liberals.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry, the Dark Enlightenment brigade will minimize the losses. Also we poach the best (not necessarily the best-credentialed, that is a different kettle of fish) from your side.

Anonymous said...

It's amazing how many conservatives seem to think political alignment is as heritable as eye color. As if there are no conservatives with kids who turn liberal as soon as they go off to college or realize they're gay or simply have more sensitivity than a stone.

It also depends on how well parents treat their kids. Often abuse produces hypersensitivity and (post-adolescent) rebellion. I'm not saying that all or even most conservatives are child-beating SOBs, just too many. And plenty of liberals abuse their kids too, just in different ways (i.e. verbal guilt trips).

Anonymous said...

Well, take the Reagan kids. Mike the adopted one has been an old fashion conservative for years but Patti and Ronnie are liberal and decease Maureen was a moderate.

Anonymous said...

Here's liberal fertility:

Baby Boomer generation - 0-2 children per Professional SWPL Couple.

Generation X - 3-4 Children per Professional SWPL Couple.

Generation Y - 0-2 Children per Professional SWPL Couple.

Millenials - ???

You people talking about 3-4 children are talking about liberal SWPL parents in their 40's and 50's. It doesn't apply to the youngest SWPL liberals.

Upper middle class Generation X was horrified by their Baby Boomer parents divorcing and so decided to do Helicopter Parenting on their 3-4 children.

These people are in their 40's and 50's. They are NOT 12-39.

Saberdancemetrician said...

Upper middle class Generation X was horrified by their Baby Boomer parents divorcing and so decided to do Helicopter Parenting on their 3-4 children.

Generation X didn't exactly have the economic opportunities available to Baby Boomers or Generation Y. So why more fertility? Unless it is (relative) poverty rather than wealth that drives it up.

Silver said...

It's amazing how many conservatives seem to think political alignment is as heritable as eye color. As if there are no conservatives with kids who turn liberal as soon as they go off to college or realize they're gay or simply have more sensitivity than a stone.

It doesn't have to be completely heritable for the effect to work. It'll take longer than if it were completely heritable, but in the long-run 'liberalism' - particularly in the sense of its disastrous social mores - is a spent force. Also, one hundred years ago liberalism was based on telling uncomfortable truths; today it's based on outrageous reality-denial. So liberalism's ability to lure conservatives based on the attraction of it possessing the latest, flashiest, cutting-edge rationality is severely diminished (although it can continue to float on the basis of feel-good fantasies for some time yet).

Religion's the only exception - and libs can be useful here against fundies - but contrary to what libs think religion can survive and thrive even if people don't actually believe in the religion's content. Religion is as much the outward expression of inner attitude/outlook toward life as it is specific religious content. Conflict between religions is, likewise, based as much on cultural identity than religious content. (Participants claim otherwise, of course, but I think there's hope that one day we could be more honest about what we're doing.) People raised in religious households who realize the content is BS tend swear off religion forever. Whereas people who cease believing the content of one religion often investigate the content of other religions to see whether something more rationally palatable is on offer. These people tend to wind up practising faith of one kind or another again even if they don't believe its content, or else they defend the institution of religion even while having no faith of their own.

Silver said...

"Demography is destiny.
That is all."

Then how come Jews, at 2% of the US population, comprise the ruling elite of this nation?
And how come Mexico, though only 5% white, is still ruled by whites?
How come gays, at 2% of the population, are more powerful than tens of millions of Evangelicals.
How come most of Latin America are still run by white elites?


Actually, while not the best examples, those are examples of demography being destiny. Part of the meaning of the phrase is that the traits of the population in question are going to go a long way to determine the sort of society that emerges. More powerfully: If the numbers of [X people or Y traits] are great enough, if intentions are incompatible with the qualities of the population at large then intentions will simply no longer matter; the weight of numbers will prove decisive. For instance, if you want to have a society in which secular scientific views hold sway it's going to be impossible to achieve it if the number of people whose ability to hold secular scientific views and to make life decisions on the basis of them is severely constrained grows large enough.

Anonymous said...

People in their 50's are not generation x they are considered the younger babybommres born in the 1950's and they certainly didn't have 3 to 4 kids they were even lower than the older babyboomers who got married at a younger age.