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.
This sounds like the study was funded by anti abortion losers. Contraception isn’t the problem, its billionaires, lobbyists, and politicians making it utterly unaffordable and morally wrong in multiple ways, but only left leaning people would even consider holding back on having children based on how much suffering they would guarantee their own children by merely giving birth to them.
conservatives think people should have more children and the study finds they do in fact have more children. i don’t see what the problem is here
Also correlation is not causation. People living in denser cities both tend to lean left and have a higher cost of living, which makes a family less practical. People living in rural areas tend to lean right, have a lower cost of living, and live closer to more family, which makes starting a family of their own much easier.
According to the research I’ve seen most people don’t have kids because they don’t want to have kids. Significant amount also can’t afford it. Everything else (like worrying about wars, climate change, healthcare etc.) is not that significant.
True, if anything, there are a lot of people who have kids and wish they didn’t.
“People having kids and wishing they didn’t” is due to a lack of options, social pressure, ostracism for choosing abortion, the stigma of remaining childless, and a whole bunch of propaganda.
People choosing not to have kids because they don’t want them is a relatively modern lifestyle.
For most of history, people having kids wasn’t so much a choice as it was something that happened to them.
People have kids because making kids is super fun.
It is still happening I hear
Unless you are being willfully obtuse, you either misread or ignored the intent of my comment.