A new study reveals that left-leaning Americans are having significantly fewer children, driving the overall US fertility decline. Meanwhile, conservatives are maintaining steady birth rates, a demographic trend that could gradually shift the nation’s political landscape rightward.

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.

  • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
    16·
    4 days ago

    Wow, you really linked to the Institute of Family Studies?

    The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) is a conservative “think tank” which, according to its website, has the expressed mission “to strengthen marriage and natural family and advancing the well-being of children through research and public education.”[1] Research from IFS and its employees are frequently cited and published in both conservative outlets such as National Review [2] and more mainstream ones, like the Washington Post.[3]. “IFS is a successor to the Ridge Foundation, through which Bradley and others used to support Wilcox’s National Marriage Project.”[1] The Institute for Family Studies says that its “commitment is rooted in the social-science fact that children are most likely to thrive when they are raised by their own married biological parents. The underlying premise of its work is that families and communities, freedom and prosperity, and the political order itself – both at home and abroad – are all critically dependent upon the existence of a strong healthy, pervasive marriage culture among the citizenry.”[4]

    IFS is also an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN), a web of state pressure groups that denote themselves as “think tanks” and drive a right-wing agenda in statehouses nationwide.

    That’s not a credible source at all.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
      17·
      3 days ago

      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.

      • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
        51·
        3 days ago

        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.