You can go on about sex education and religion all you want but I think it all boils down to cost of living. Red staters can get very cheap but decent housing and support a reasonable standard of living from labor that doesn't require a phd. So they have more babies at all ages, because it's not as big a deal out there. A baby in New York will condemn you to a life in the suburbs, cutting years off your absolutely necessary $20 martini nights at the club.
The more interesting thing is the reporting on this matter itself. There's a constant stream of urban liberal editorials/articles on red state teen pregnancies. I think it's because at some level liberals are freaked out about being out-bred by such a wide margin. This is why the self-congratulatory and "chastising the hicks" bits are so necessary.
This is why Palin and her family freaks out a lot of liberal women SOO badly. She's a stark reminder of their infertility.
I would argue the latter. Where it's cheap to form a household and have kids, people are conservative. This is true all over the country in culturally disparate regions. There are barely any exceptions.
I'm sure it's complicated by mobility: people move from red to blue and vice versa to find people with matching tendencies. But I doubt that's enough to matter.
There could be a whole host of confounding factors. One other explanation:
Where there are strong knowledge-based economies, there's a need to delay childbearing until one has the necessary education to be economically competitive. This results in low fertility rates, and it also results in high education levels. High education correlates with a liberal political orientation. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility.
or:
Where there are large numbers of skilled immigrants, people tend to lean liberal, as the cultural melting pot "desensitizes" them to new ideas. This exchange of ideas also spurs a bustling idea marketplace and healthy startup economy. This, in turn, results in higher levels of income inequality, which means that people have a large incentive to play the lottery and delay childbearing until they've had their shot at the big bucks. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility.
or:
Smarter people tend to be educated. Educated people tend to be liberals. Smarter people also tend not to get pregnant accidentally. Therefore, liberal political orientation correlates with delayed childbearing and lower fertility.
Liberal politics in the United States is driven largely by unionism. I don't see how the economic protectionism and populism of US liberals develops from high education and cultural melting-pots.
> This is why Palin and her family freaks out a lot of liberal women SOO badly. She's a stark reminder of their infertility.
Uh, no.
I'm not a woman, but the women I know who are freaked out by Palin (and ALL the women I know are in fact freaked out by Palin, since you brought her up) are freaked out because they feel she's an incompetent, hypocritical buffoon dressed up in $150,000 designer clothes that Republican donors unknowingly bought.
And they hate her policy proposals - the policies they are able to parse out of her almost incomprehensible verbal wanderings.
She had enraged the entire left almost instantly. There was no analysis done, and once she had proven herself a 2nd rate intellect, the rage had turned to joy.
You just described 98% of politicians at the national level. Palin is completely unremarkable. There is clearly a special, visceral reaction to her that has nothing to do with policies.
> dressed up in $150,000 designer clothes
I'm sure Obama used his own money for the make-up artist before the debates and also paid for the backdrops used for his convention speech. Newsflash: the parties spend money on TV appearances.
Note: I do not like Palin or McCain. I only find the reaction to them intriguing.
You're not thinking as a member of some minority. Imagine if the first black <something> was an incompetent former rapper/football player. It can't be easy to watch, perhaps especially if you think she never had any chance of winning. I'm also sure her policies on abortion have a lot to do with it.
A baby in New York will condemn you to a life in the suburbs, cutting years off your absolutely necessary $20 martini nights at the club.
People in New York have fewer children because:
1. We marry a lot later. This is one of the few cities in the world where it's not stigmatized to be over 30 and unmarried.
2. The housing situation is, indeed, shitty. It's not as bad as you say, with the condemnation to suburbs that you depict as inexorable, but having kids will accelerate the outright theft of your savings by the property-owning class.
There's a constant stream of urban liberal editorials/articles on red state teen pregnancies. I think it's because at some level liberals are freaked out about being out-bred by such a wide margin.
This "constant stream" of articles exists for a reason. Religious conservatives are trying to push their social model on us. We're pointing out that it doesn't work well even on its home turf. This isn't about "chastising the hicks". The victims of the red-state family breakdowns are, obviously, people in the red states.
This is why Palin and her family freaks out a lot of liberal women SOO badly. She's a stark reminder of their infertility.
Although I'm a man, I'll point out that Palin scares anyone with a brain. This has nothing to do with fertility. 1. She has an extremely narrow-minded view, which is completely inappropriate for someone running for high public office. 2. She stands for everything that is consumptive ("drill, baby, drill"), self-indulgent, mean-spirited, wrong and stupid about this country. 3. Although she was picked to rally middle-of-the-road women, she failed completely at that... but is great at stoking the lowest common denominator bottom-feeders, as the people who show up at Palin rallies (racists, paranoids) are loathsome.
New Yorkers don't despise people who choose to have large families. We despise those who do so irresponsibly, and we despise the very rich who have large families to show off (a Manhattan/Boston phenomenon) their means, such as Mitt Romney, because of their effect on housing prices... but we don't have a knee-jerk animosity toward people in general who choose to have four or five kids.
The more interesting thing is the reporting on this matter itself. There's a constant stream of urban liberal editorials/articles on red state teen pregnancies. I think it's because at some level liberals are freaked out about being out-bred by such a wide margin. This is why the self-congratulatory and "chastising the hicks" bits are so necessary.
This is why Palin and her family freaks out a lot of liberal women SOO badly. She's a stark reminder of their infertility.