I posted earlier concerning the "marriage gap" story in USAToday. Here is the gist:
The marriage divide drew attention in the 2004 presidential race. President Bush beat John Kerry by 15 percentage points among married people and lost by 18 percentage points among unmarried people, according to an exit poll conducted by national news media organizations.
Make what you want of that. USAToday has a second article on the "Fertility Gap."
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic mother of five from San Francisco, has fewer children in her district than any other member of Congress: 87,727.Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, a Mormon father of eight, represents the most children: 278,398.
These two extremes reflect a stark demographic divide between the congressional districts controlled by the major political parties.
Republican House members overwhelmingly come from districts that have high percentages of married people and lots of children, according to a USA TODAY analysis of 2005 Census Bureau data released last month.
This strikes me as very interesting. People who invest significant portions of their time and treasure in their children tend to vote Republican by significant margins. People who invest in something else are significantly more likely to vote Democrat. I am sure this is a new thing in American politics. It suggests a more solid basis for the underlying division in American political culture than in the past, and it may have serious consequences for the future. Of course, children do not always grow up to vote the same way their parents did. But they mostly do. Whatever happens this November, Republicans are steadily outbreeding the Democrats.
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