Breeding Ideology

The article linked to in the subject is another comment on the repercussions of falling fertility rates among certain groups. This time, it is liberal voters in the US. It claims that the Democratic Party may be in for some challenges if its potential voter base keeps declining. Since most people tend to follow the voting nature of their parents, if Democratic voters are not having babies that will make for a lot less Democratic voters in the future. The author, Arthur C. Brooks, sites the 2004 General Social Survey:

“[I]f 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.”

Why is this? The easiest answer I can come to would relate to the lifestyle choices of each group. With nothing to back this up but my own perception, liberal, Democratic voters, tend to congregate in cities, and have a focus on their individual career instead of family, while conservative, Republican voters, live in suburbia or rural areas, and put focus on child rearing and family. This explains why perhaps having children is not as conducive to the “liberal lifestyle”, but it still doesn’t explain why liberal values correlate with low birth rates. I suppose the best explanation for that is the rejection of “traditional” values as outdated and a desire for progress, hence the term “progressives”, and family being a “traditional” institution. If you have other ideas, feel free to leave them in the comments section. The article doesn’t answer the question except through a humorous quote cited to “a liberal columnist in a major paper”:

"Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation."

I suppose the appropriate conservative response could be, “yea, maybe it’s just because liberals can’t get any. Ha!” At any rate, it’s certainly an interesting topic. Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule. I have friends who are liberal and want/have multiple children and I have friends who tend to the conservative side and do not want children. But perhaps in general, the type that does not desire children tends to agree with the liberal side in our current political climate. The article goes on to show what will happen if the current trend continues and basically rules out any future victory for the Democratic Party. I think the pendulum effect will come into play, though: as one political viewpoint reaches the mainstream there is always a reaction, even if it has to come from folks whose parents would be ashamed of their voting record.

Another interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that it has been noted for some time now in Europe. The aforelinked (did I just create a word? Cool.) BBC article lists the sustainable birthrate level in Europe to be 2.1 children per woman and shows most countries at a much lower level (anywhere from 1.29 in Greece to 1.99 in Ireland). This certainly could have an effect on the political climate of Europe, but as Niall Ferguson, professor of History at Harvard, writes in his article “The Origins of the Great War of 2007” (oh, and sorry for all the doomsday stuff lately, guess it’s just been on my mind), it could have a much larger effect as well. He sites that while the population of Europe is falling on the whole, the Muslim population is on the rise and this could play into the cause of a major global struggle. He writes:

“In 1950, there had three times as many people in Britain as in Iran. By 1995, the population of Iran had overtaken that of Britain and was forecast to be 50 percent higher by 2050”

Great, so just on the horizon we’re going to have the great Redneck vs. Islamofascist wars to look forward to. Man, that could make for some interesting satire…but I will refrain. Again, I don’t think that we should over generalize. Not every child of Republican parents is going to vote Republican and most children of Muslim parents are not going to be terrorists, but the statistical trends do lead to interesting analysis and you can’t deny that the more people you have of a certain ideology, the stronger that view will be in the world.

I would be interested to see if any similar trends took place in history. I would imagine only recently have we been at a point with such wealth, not to mention multiple birth control solutions that this could even be a factor. Probably what you would find in history is the forceful removal of an idea via limiting the breeding process. It’s interesting to see it happening voluntarily now and only time will tell which way it will swing.