Marriage and Demographics

This just in from Maggie Gallagher's marriage think tank:

Ron Lesthaeghe, the dean of European demographers, is in the U.S. this year, turning his formidable intellectual gaze to the American scene. What he has discovered is very interesting (see his paper on American demographic trends here). In general, he finds that America's political divisions are mirrored in dramatic demographic divisions. The Blue States--principally the Northeast, the West Coast, and the upper Midwest--typically have high rates of cohabitation, high average ages at first marriage, low fertility rates, and high abortion rates. The Red States--the lower Midwest and the South--typically have low rates of cohabitation, low average ages at first marriage, high fertility rates, and low abortion rates.

Blue States like Massachusetts look a lot like European countries such as the Netherlands in their tendency to postpone childbearing. Indeed, Blue States resemble Northern Europe in many demographic respects. Bottom line: marriage has ceased to anchor the adult lifecourse in Blue States. Perhaps it's no accident that Blue Staters and Europeans see eye to eye on so many issues.

Red States like Kansas and Alabama, by contrast, have comparatively high levels of fertility, low rates of cohabitation, early ages at first marriage, and so on. These states also tend to be more religious. They most decidedly do not look like Europe. Southern Red States also have high rates of divorce. I think there is something about nominally-religious Scotch-Irish Southerners that makes them more divorce prone (beyond the concentration of poverty in many Southern states). Theories anyone?

Lesthaege also looks at the link between demographics and voting in 2004. He finds an EXCEEDINGLY STRONG LINK BETWEEN DEMOGRAPHICS AND VOTING IN THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. Money quote:

"On occasion demographers have been quite successful in predicting election results...the very strong negative correlation of -.88 found here between the Second Demographic Transition [his indicator of the deinstitutionalization of marriage]...and the percentage votes for G.W. Bush in the 2004 elections is to our knowledge one of the highest spatial correlations between demographic and voting behavior on record."

This correlation holds up remarkably well after controlling for all the usual suspects: education, income, percent urban, race, ethnicity, and even religion. So there is something about being married with children--above and beyond religious factors-- that makes people vote Republican.

Of course, as others have noted, it is not entirely clear that the Republican Party has done all that much for marriage lately. Perhaps some smart, centrist Democrats will take a look at these electoral trends and realize that they can make inroads in Red America by eliminating the marriage penalties in our tax and transfer systems, promoting community marriage policies, reforming divorce laws, and making the child tax credit more generous. Or perhaps Republicans will see these trends and realize they need to do more to help their base.

Ron. J. Lesthaeghe and Lisa Neidert, "The Second Demographic Transition in the U.S: Spatial Patterns and Correlates,"