maybe we should outlaw birth control

I’ve posted numerous times here over the past few years on the so-called “fertility gap” between progressives and conservatives. Well, here’s a link to yet another article on the subject. This one comes from the “San Francisco Chronicle,” and I pass it along mainly because it mentions a statistic that I found interesting. According to this article, there’s evidence that four out of five people end up voting like their parents. Having met quite a few progressives in my lifetime who had escaped conservative households, I’d like to think that this isn’t the case, but I suspect it is. Anyway, here’s a clip. (If I get the time, I’m going to write to the author of the piece and see if she can back up the 4/5 claim with a citation. I’ll let you know what she says.)

…Over the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals — continuing to seed the future with their genes by filling bassinets coast to coast with tiny Future Republicans of America.

Take a randomly selected sample of 100 liberal adults and 100 conservative adults. According to an analysis of the 2004 General Social Survey — a bible of data for social scientists — the liberals would have had 147 kids, while the conservatives would have had 208. That’s a fertility gap of 41 percent. Even adjusting for other variables like age and income, there is a gap of 19 percent.

Now superimpose this on a map of the United States. The highest fertility rate is found in the most Republican state, Utah, home to the Mormon Church. The lowest fertility belongs to Vermont, a state liberal enough to be the first to sanction gay unions.

The states with the next highest fertility rates, according to the latest National Center for Health Statistics survey, are Arizona, Alaska and Texas, otherwise known as “red states.” States with the next lowest fertility rates are Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, all “blue states”…

But wait, you may say: the attitudes of the parents don’t determine what ideology or political party their offspring will adopt as their own. Yet they usually do.

Political scientists have long found that 4 out of 5 people with a party preference grow up to vote the way their parents voted. In fact, while many people experience a temporary rejection of their parents’ politics in very early adulthood, virtually nothing is more predictive of your political ideology than that of your parents — it’s more of a determining factor than income, education or any other societal yardstick…

Now, will someone please take my idea for a “Condomless Progressive Orgies” movement seriously?

update: I just heard back from the reporter. Here’s her response:

I’m out of the office so I don’t have my notes with me, but the best research done on this topic has come from the University of Michigan’s poli sci dept. I’d recommend perusing their department web site or contacting them directly if you want to get your hands on the raw data…. Good luck — Vicki Haddock