A recent study published in Scientific Reports suggests that political beliefs are increasingly linked to the number of children Americans choose to have. The findings indicate that while conservative individuals tend to maintain birth rates near historical averages, left-leaning individuals are having significantly fewer children. This demographic trend provides evidence that differing birth rates are a main driver of recent fertility declines in the United States.
The data revealed a pronounced change in how political beliefs relate to family size. For individuals born in the early 1900s, political orientation had almost no association with the number of children they had. However, beginning with the cohort born between 1943 and 1947, a massive divergence emerged.
“We expected these results, but not to such a dramatic extent,” Fieder told PsyPost. From the mid-century cohorts onward, individuals with right-wing political views maintained birth rates at or slightly above the replacement level. The replacement level, typically considered to be 2.1 children per woman, is the rate needed for a population to replace itself from one generation to the next without immigration.
In contrast, the birth rates of left-wing individuals dropped sharply, falling well below the replacement level in the more recent cohorts. The authors noticed this drop aligns with historical changes in family planning. “We found that the gap began with the introduction of modern contraception,” Fieder said.
Low birth rates are a problem for capitalism, not humanity.
When given a choice, women choose to have fewer babies.
No? Most women say they’d have more kids if they could afford it.
When women have access to education, career opportunities, and contraception, birth rates drop.
We assessed the quantitative impact of education and family planning in high‐fertility settings using a regression framework inspired by Granger causality. We found that women’s attainment of lower secondary education is key to accelerating fertility decline and found an accelerating effect of contraceptive prevalence for modern methods. We found the impact of contraceptive prevalence to be substantially larger than that of education.
Widespread use of contraceptives and, to a lesser extent, girls’ education through at least age 14 have the greatest impact in bringing down a country’s fertility rate.
Three mechanisms influence the fertility decision of educated women: (i) the relatively higher incomes and thus higher income forgone due to childbearing leads them to want fewer children. The better care these women give increases their children’s human capital and reduces the economic need for more children; (ii) the positive health impacts of education, on both women and their children, mean women are better able to give birth and children’s higher survival rate reduces the desire for more; and (iii) the knowledge impact of education means women are better at using contraceptives. For developing population policies, it is thus important to understand these impacts on income, health, and knowledge, and their influence on fertility decisions in the specific country context.
Sure, but even then they stay above replacement. You need the economic calculus of an urbanized capitalist economy to get the shitshow seen in most of the developed world.
Affordability is only 36% of the stated reasons women aren’t having more children.
The other reasons are: still looking for the right spouse, lifestyle or career, family is still growing, and trouble conceiving.
There’s many reasons and just shrugging and saying it’s the economy doesn’t explain enough.
I mean there are many reasons, but it’s still obvious from the data that a more accommodating society (both economically and otherwise) would have more children. It’d be easy to argue, for example, that “still looking for the right spouse,” is at least partially caused by delays in entering long-term relationships until it’s financially viable, and this also ties into “trouble conceiving,” because people are expected to spend the years they’d have the easiest time conceiving advancing their careers so they can provide a decent life to their future children. It’d also be absurd to suggest the necessity of two-income households hasn’t contributed to women prioritizing their careers over starting families*. What “affordability” really means here is the proportion of women who’d be able to have more children right now if not for money; it doesn’t count knock-on effects that boil down to unaffordability. Modern urbanized societies are deeply unkind to mothers in ways that need to be untangled before current birth rates can be presented as the results of freedom.
*To be clear, this is perfectly fine as long as it’s a free choice, but clearly in most cases it’s an attempt to optimize against social and economic conditions. Current birth rates aren’t any freer a choice than those of two centuries ago; both are responses to social conditions that make one choice much more optimal compared to others.
What percentage of the reason is simply a refusing to manufacture additional meat for the orphan crushing machine?
From the article that @NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io linked…which I’m just now realizing is from Institute for Family Studies a fucking conservative think tank:
One could argue those other reasons are symptoms of a bad economy.
Right and I agree to an extent. The conversations around this subject always conclude the rates will start to go up if the economy is better or if the US enacts maternity leave and care.
But that doesn’t explain why other countries that have parental leave and better support systems are also seeing falling fertility and birth rates.
The connecting piece that seems to be emerging is women’s ability to control their reproductive health and access to education.
Trouble conceiving is often related to age. Ability to conceive naturally drops in women’s thirties. If a woman in her twenties didn’t think her family could support kids, then in her thirties she may find out she’s having trouble conceiving
We should stop making young people support people in old age. It drops fertility, makes the electorate older and more likely to vote for more benefits for themselves.
One example is rent control. It only decreases your cost of living if you’ve been there a long time. It decreases the supply of housing long term
Women in their twenties are delaying children for a multitude of reasons and career opportunities and education are big factors.
When given the choice via contraception and reproductive health, women have children later in their lives.
Wow, you really linked to the Institute of Family Studies?
That’s not a credible source at all.
TIL, but also I mean, I wouldn’t trust it to interpret data or give me unbiased information but there’s only so much you can mess with in a survey. They’d also be more blatant about it if the data was doctored.
They can absolutely fuck with surveys. How questions are phrased is one way. We have no idea how they collected this data. They’re not a trustworthy source because they have an agenda to force women to have more children.
Which most can’t, so they wisely choose not to when given a choice.
Not doing something because one can’t afford it isn’t a choice; women in developed countries aren’t choosing not to have children any more than I’m choosing not to buy a private jet.
I mean, you’re right and you’re not right:
Non-wealthy but not destitute and dominated women can decide to limit the number of children they have to an economically and otherwise responsible amount. That’s an ACTUAL available choice.
The aforementioned destitute and dominated women (whether due to patriarchal dictates, authoritarian legislation, or other impediments to their freedom of choice) might not have that choice, but that doesn’t mean that those WITH the choice aren’t often choosing to forgo additional/any children for partly or wholly economic reasons.
It’s technically an available choice, but my argument is that the consequences to not making the optimal choice are so harsh that it might as well not be a choice at all. For a somewhat absurd example, one could technically choose not to work and just be homeless, but obviously that doesn’t mean we’re free to choose whether or not to work. Freedom is a spectrum and birth rates for the working class (especially working class women) tend to be closer to “not free” than “free” on that spectrum.
PS: To be clear my intention isn’t to invalidate anyone’s choice to have or not to have children; my problem is with presenting the current situation as the unavoidable result of women’s liberation when in reality there’s a clear set of avoidable incentives leading to declining birthrates.
But choosing to not have children because they can’t afford it is a relatively new freedom women have.
Be as pissy as you want, contraception has changed our fertility and birth rates. Poor women didn’t have a choice before even if they couldn’t afford to have more kids.
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The second one is entitled shit.
EDIT: evidently my comment is nowhere near clear enough: what I mean is that thinking that any woman having the choice, automatically chooses not to get children, is entitled shit.
Bodily autonomy is entitlement, but not shit
The commenter writes that any woman would always have less children if given a choice: I don’t agree, as there are also women who want to have many children and it’s also ok. I’m all in for autonomy.
When women are given the choice, overall they choose to have less children.
The women having more children are not having enough to offset the amount of women choosing to have less.
Agreed! But your sentence has a very different meaning from the one I addressed
You’re being pedantic.
You might be right :)
Yes, because women are entitled to make decisions about their own bodies. Glad you’re following along.
Exactly, but how the sentence is written implies that any woman with a choice, would choose to avoid children. I see it as discriminatory, as there are many women who freely choose to have many children.
I did, and am progressive as fuck. I just like kids. Had 4 then married a guy with 5. I love having a big family and the kids love the extended network of siblings. There’s room for me to do that because so many people are having none so I appreciate those people a lot, but am not among them. Raising kids was the best work I have ever done.
Thank you for this. I have the utmost respect for people who take on the care of raising children well. I only have one and it’s hard as fuck.
You called women having a choice “entitled shit”.
Why are you backtracking to make yourself sound less abrasive?
What I meant is that the commenter and people thinking that women having a choice directly choose not to have children are acting entitled and it’s shit. So the opposite of what is being read out of my comment. Probably I wrote it just badly 😆
Ironic don’t you think? Lol
What? Lol
You’re complaining about the phrasing of “When given a choice, women choose to have fewer babies.” when your own phrasing was complete dogshit at getting your point across.
Sure