Matt Yglesias

Birth Control in Afghanistan

The underlying idea that lowering Afghanistan’s fertility rate would help it develop economically makes a lot of sense. Especially in an overwhelmingly rural country, the tendency is for a rapid increase in population to lead to falling living standards.

That said, the specific method of trying to do this by talking to male religious leaders about birth control seems to me to be at odds with most of what we know about this subject. As a recent Economist story on fertility trends emphasized, women in the developing world generally have more children than they want to. When we see falling fertility rates, it’s normally a result of women being empowered to make more decisions about their own lives:

A surprising amount is known about how many children parents want, thanks to a series of surveys by the Demographic and Health Surveys programme. The picture it paints is of huge numbers of unplanned pregnancies. In Brazil, for example, the wanted fertility rate in 1996 (the most recent year available) was 1.8; the actual fertility rate then was 2.5. In India the wanted rate in 2006 was 1.9, the actual one, 2.7. In Ghana the figures for 2003 were 3.7 and 4.4. The rule seems to be that women want one child fewer than they are having (except in some rich countries, where they say they want more). [...]

That points to another big reason why fertility is falling: the spread of female education. Go back to the countries where fertility has fallen fastest and you will find remarkable literacy programmes. As early as 1962, for example, 80% of young women in Mauritius could read and write. In Iran in 1976, only 10% of rural women aged 20 to 24 were literate. Now that share is 91%, and Iran not only has one of the best-educated populations in the Middle East but the one in which men and women have the most equal educational chances. Iranian girls aged 15-19 have roughly the same number of years of schooling as boys do. Educated women are more likely to go out to work, more likely to demand contraception and less likely to want large families.

Of course, the case of China and the one-child policy does show that massive coercion works as well. But the problem in Afghanistan is almost certainly the view that how many children a woman should have is a decision that should be made by men. Just talking to men about making that decision in a different way is unlikely to address the issue. Of course, sending girls to school is a controversial issue in Afghanistan, but if the Islamic Republic of Iran was capable of overseeing a massive increase in women’s educational opportunities, then such things can’t be inconsistent with culturally conservative Islamism in any particularly straightforward sense.

The Demographics of Unemployment

Interactive feature from The New York Times lets you see the unemployment rate for different demographic subgroups. The feature is labeled “The Jobless Rate for People Like You” so I checked and saw that white men aged 25-44 with college degrees have an unemployment rate of just 3.9 percent. Even if I reclassify myself as Hispanic it’s just 4.8 percent. Fortunately, I’m also allowed to see how people who aren’t like me are doing. Thus we learn that for African-American men aged 15-24 the unemployment rate is a staggering 30.5 percent. Even for the subset of young black men who have college degrees (which has to be a pretty tiny slice of the 15-24 set) the unemployment rate is 12.7 percent.

In general, unemployment is higher for the young than the old higher for the worse-educated than for the better educated, higher for men than for women, and higher for blacks than whites.

Same Sex Marriage By Age and State

Lisa Wade shows us the shape of things to come:

This makes the triumph of marriage equality look fairly inevitable, but also frustratingly far off.

Income in Cities and Suburbs

Via Planet Money, the Discovering Urbanism blog does an interesting chart comparing the income in the urban core to the income in the metro area as a whole for several American cities:

The trends here are very pronounced in some metro areas but the blue line showing the 40 city average looks pretty muted. In DC, the District itself has now regained parity with the suburbs for the first time in decades. Boston and Chicago are still poorer on average than their suburbs. And Detroit continues its relative decline vis-a-vis the rest of the metro area even as the entire Michigan boat is trending downwards.

The Daddy Factor

Something you see a fair amount of in Sweden that’s pretty rare in the United States is men out on the streets walking around sans mom with babies in the middle of a weekday (see also this guy and this guy):

Sweden is one of the most feminism-influenced countries on earth. It has the world’s highest share of women in parliament (basically half) and what shows up in that kind of statistic is also visible on the streets. Sweden has both a high female labor force participation rate, and a total fertility rate that’s high by developed world standards. The way that happens seems to be in part that men do closer to their fair share of caregiving for children.

This kind of social phenomenon is reenforced by public policy. Sweden has a generous (albeit somewhat complicated) parental leave system that’s structured to encourage men to take part in it.

Where the Foreigners Are

An interesting fact about Sweden is that an extremely high proportion of its population is foreign born. It’s not the highest in the world—Canada and Australia take the crown—but the foreign-born are a larger proportion of the population than in the United States:

A large number of those immigrants are from other European countries, but apparently Sweden has one of the world’s largest Assyrian populations.

The Rise and Fall of the Secretary

Job Voyager is a cool tool that lets you see the share of the American workforce that’s been in different job categories over time. Behold the rise and fall of the secretary:

Voicemail, email, cell phones, smart phones, and laptops are rapidly making this occupational category obsolete. Also interesting to note that as of Mad Men’s 1963 we still hadn’t arrived at Peak Secretary occurred in the 1970 Census and secretaries were a larger proportion of the population in 1990 than they had been in 1950.

Social Security and Suicide

Social Security Administration building, Washington, DC (cc photo by Ken Mayer)

Jacob Weisberg discusses various pro-death initiatives from the American right and brings this interesting factoid about Social Security and suicide rates:

Other GOP policies promote death for senior citizens with more modest incomes. Take the conservative push to privatize Social Security, which George W. Bush proposed and failed to get Congress to pass in 2005. Social Security has driven life expectancy up and death rates down since it was instituted. It has an especially pronounced impact on suicide rates for the elderly, which have declined 56 percent since 1930. Had Bush prevailed, we would now be undoing income security for the elderly. Those who gambled on the stock market and lost would be less able to afford medicine, food, and heating for their homes. In aggregate, they’d presumably die younger and commit suicide more often.

Whenever you read, whether in the context of the United States or Japan or Europe, about the “problem” of population aging and demographic shifts it’s really worth reflecting on the fact that these are good problems to have. That old people live longer these days, with better medical care and radically less suicide, is a good thing. The fact that our wealthier societies allow people to spend more years in retirement after a few decades of productive work is a good thing. There are certain policy challenges associated with this, but it shouldn’t really be seen as a bleak scenario or an overall negative situation.

Fear of a White Electorate

Charles Murray has a chart:

And some odd commentary on the chart:

The graph is based exclusively on non-Latino whites (because that’s who the book is about). If you want to see a visual representation of the development of the bubble that Barack Obama has been living in since he left Hawaii, that graph is it. Judging from the GSS data, every white socioeconomic class in America has become more conservative in the last four decades, with the Traditional Middles moving the most decisively rightward. But the Intellectual Uppers have not just moved slightly in the other direction, they have careened in the other direction.

They won the election with a candidate who sounded centrist running against an exceptionally weak Republican opponent. But they’ve been in the bubble too long. They really think that the rest of America thinks as they do. Nothing but the Pauline Kael syndrome can explain the political idiocy of letting Attorney General Eric Holder go after the interrogators.

Obviously one point to make is that Eric Holder is supposed to make decisions based on the law, rather than based on partisan political considerations.

Another point, however, would be that it’s very odd to assert that Eric Holder and Barack Obama have spent the past several decades living in a bubble that consists entirely of non-Latino whites. They probably see Steven Chu and Eric Shinseki and Hilda Solis and Gary Locke at the cabinet meetings, among other things.

You also, honestly, have to be pretty detached from reality to think John McCain was a weak candidate. In November of 2008, he had a 61 percent favorable rating which is pretty darn good. The 2008 election just happened to pit two different popular politicians against each other.

Age, Marriage Equality, and Knowing Gay People

Some interesting data from Andrew Gelman and Daniel Lee. First the familiar finding that support for marriage equality is strongly correlated with being young:

Second, who tells pollsters that they know someone who’s gay:

Now one assumes that America’s senior citizens are actually mistaken about this and have, in fact, been acquainted with a gay person or two over the course of their lives. But they probably didn’t realize it.

At any rate, there are interesting age-related patterns in both questions but they look to be very different patterns. The under-30 cohort’s strong support for marriage equality, in particular, doesn’t seem to stem from any notably greater familiarity with gay individuals.

The Two Political Blogospheres

Pittsburgh, PA (wikimedia)

I don’t really understand why conservatives insist on holding their blogger conference in the city same as ours on the same week. It just seems to invite unflattering comparisons. Here’s Timothy McNulty from the Post-Gazette:

Even though conservatives are holding their own convention of online activists in Pittsburgh this week, they are not trying to directly compete with the giant Netroots Nation. If they did, they would be squashed.

The RightOnline conference starting tomorrow morning at the Sheraton Station Square will have about a quarter of the 2,000 attendees at the liberal conference in the convention center, and only about 20 speakers to the 400 at Netroots. Liberals are throwing multiple parties at the Warhol and a gay-lesbian kiss-in. Conservatives end Friday night with a film criticizing Al Gore.

Basic demographics just make it way harder for the right to compete online. The over-60 demographic is a hotbed of conservative sentiments, but it’s also very disinclined to go online. The stereotype of progressive bloggers and blog readers as “young” tends to be wildly overstated, but what is true is that the online universe contains relatively few senior citizens, and the current version of the conservative coalition contains quite a lot of seniors.

Buchanan: GOP Needs More Race-Baiting, Not Less

Pat Sees White People (wikimedia)

A provocative article by Pat Buchanan argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans shouldn’t worry about alienating Hispanic voters, they should just focus on getting white people to like them more:

In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4 percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times as large. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same as adding 10 percent to the candidate’s Hispanic vote.

If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, got the 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the same impact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62 percent.

And he sees race-baiting attacks as the way to do it:

Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled.

And McCain might be president.

His specific argument about Sonia Sotomayor is that Republicans need to get more explicit about the idea that, as a Latina, she will make rulings that disadvantage white people and that white America ought therefore band together to stop her. This is already the subtext of their arguments but I guess he feels it’s not close enough to the surface.

At any rate, while Buchanan is being repugnant, I do think this is something conservatives are going to want to think about. Consider the case of Jeff Sessions (R-AL). We’re talking about a guy who’s too racist to get confirmed as a judge, but just racist enough to win a Senate seat in Alabama. And it’s not because Alabama is a lilly white state. With 65 percent of its electorate white, and 29 percent of its electorate African-American, Alabama is much more demographically favorable to the Democrats than is the country at large. But while McCain pulled 55 percent of the white vote nationwide he scored 88 percent of white vote in Alabama. And this is what you tend to see in the Deep South, white Americans exhibiting the kind of high levels of racial solidarity in voting behavior that you normally associate with African-Americans in the US political context.

Consequently states with small white populations like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi can be solid GOP territory. Under the circumstances, it’s not entirely crazy for Republicans to believe that the right way to respond to shifting American demographics is by just trying to amp-up the level of racial anxiety in the shrinking white majority. An analogy might be to religion. When the country was overwhelmingly Christian, Christianity didn’t play much of a role in our politics. But as the Christian majority shrank it became more and more viable to explicitly mobilize Christian identity for political purposes.

The Demographic Shift

An interesting observation about demographics from Nate Silver:

Consider this remarkable statistic. In 1980, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Democrats (or at least white Carter voters) — likewise, in 2008, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Obama voters. But whereas, in 1980, just 9 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Carter voters, 21 percent of the electorate were nonwhite Obama voters last year. Thus, Carter went down to a landslide defeat, whereas Obama defeated John McCain by a healthy margin.

And that, in a nutshell, is the changing face of the American electorate. This is one way to understand what’s wrong with conservatives who are urging the Republican Party to somehow return to their Reaganite roots. It’s a different world.

Young People and Big Government

The left-wing tilt of the under-30 cohort is sometimes glossed as primarily driven by cultural issues. Millenials are, for example, much more favorable to gay rights claims. But as Ruy Teixeira points out it extends considerably beyond that to economic questions as well:

I assume this kind of thing will be pretty heavily shaped by assessments of what actually takes place in the Obama years.

CORRECTION: This chart is mislabeled. The question wording that’s up there is from the Progressive Studies Program Millenials survey and produced a 60/27 split in favor of big government. The 78/22 split was provoked by a National Election Survey question that asked “We need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems” vs “the free market can handle these problems without government being involved.” I think the basic point stands despite the error.

The Demographics of the New Progressive Majority

Ruy Teixeira talks about his research into American demographic trends and the implication that they’ll lead to a more progressive political environment:

As ever, I want to point out that I’m not 100 percent comfortable with the use of the term “white working class” as a blanket term for all whites who don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Among other things, it’s important to keep in mind that the average income of the white working class is, on this definition, higher than the average income prevailing in the country. Just keep that in mind as you listen to Ruy.

Christianity on the Decline

Interesting Holy Week item from Gallup showing the slow-but-steady decline in the percentage of Americans self-identifying as Christian:

The right way to think about the growing political mobilization of Christianity is that back when Christian self-identification was up in the nineties there was nothing to mobilize. But as the number of self-identified Christian goes down, its potential as a politically salient identity goes up.

Karen O and the Future of Whiteness

Via the Democratic Strategist, I was interested to read Alan Abramowitz’s informative article on the demographic shifts undergirding America’s political coalitions. This is a topic also usefully explored by Ruy Teixeira in his recent report on “The New Progressive America”. Naturally, one topic that comes up in both of these discussions is the rising number of non-white—which is to say African-American or Hispanic or Asian—people in the electorate.

This, in turn, reminded me of another issue that also came to mind when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates casually refer to Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O as a “white girl.” In reality she is, as they say, “Half Korean, 100% Rock Star”. Nevertheless, I think there’s a clear sense in which it strikes people as more intuitive to refer to a half-white, half-Korean indie rock star born in Korea and raised by both parents in New Jersey as “white” than it is to refer to a half-white, half-Kenyan President born in Hawaii and raised by his white mom and grandparents as “white.”

All of which is to say that there’s a decent chance that we’re evolving in a direction where the salient divide isn’t between “white” and “non-white” but between “black” and “non-black.” Somewhat along these lines, yesterday I was watching Rick Sanchez on CNN, who I’d always thought of as just another white guy on TV, talking about Bobby Rush’s visit to Cuba and I suddenly realized that Sanchez is a Spanish name and he must be Cuban. Which is to say not “white” at all, but “Hispanic.” Just like, you know, me. But without wanting to put any words in his mouth, I don’t think either of us have a major problem hailing a cab or whatever.

Perhaps the best way to think about this is to recall that many currently “white” ethnic groups—Jews, Italians, Irish, etc.—weren’t always understood as being white. And it seems quite plausible that more and more Asians and Hispanics will, over time, come to attain “white” status. In political terms, meanwhile, once upon a time white Catholics were a core Democratic Party constituency. But over time, things just changed and the GOP coalition expanded from a white Protestant one to a broader white Christian one.

Feminism as Natalism

Michelle Goldberg wades into the debate I’ve been having with various people about the macroeconomic implications of population decline with an observation I definitely agree with:

get why liberals have shied away from this discussion, since there’s so many uncomfortable issues involved. But they really shouldn’t, because the only solutions to the problem are liberal ones! Basically, the societies where birthrates have plunged to dangerous levels – Russia, Catholic countries like Poland, Spain and Italy, as well as Japan and Singapore – are all places that make it very difficult for women to combine work and family. In countries that support working mothers, like Sweden, Denmark, Norway and France, birthrates are basically fine – they’re either just at replacement, or shrinking in a very slow, totally manageable way. (The United States is the exception, for a whole host of reasons – some intuitive and some surprising – that I’ll elaborate some other time.) That’s why the Tory MP David Willetts, in a very smart 2003 report on the threat low birthrates pose to Europe’s pension systems, wrote that “feminism is the new natalism.”

I actually agree with both of the points here. It’s clear that very low birthrates imply cuts in pay-as-you-go pension systems, and I also think it’s clear that the most reasonable policy response to low birthrates is basically an agenda of family-oriented feminism. As longtime readers will know, I’m a great admirer of the social policy framework in place in your small northern European countries, hence I have a photo of a school in Finland on hand with which to illustrate the point. That said, “X makes it easier to avoid cuts to pay-as-you-go pension systems” and “X promotes higher overall levels of well-being” are not equivalent claims, and I remain fairly skeptical about the latter.

Now, the more I write about this the more I don’t really know why I’m writing about it. Not only do conservatives think low birthrates are a problem, but the smarter brand of liberals recognize that family policies that are necessary for reasons of justice and equity are probably the best solution to the problem. So everybody wins! But I’m still not sure it’s true. Indeed, Goldberg’s post seems to implicitly indicate that modestly paced population decline is perfectly fine. And I think it’s easy to see why extremely sharp demographic shifts of any kind would be problematic. So perhaps we’re not really disagreeing at all.

Demographic Dividend

I’ve been reading a few things that people recommended on the macroeconomic consequences of demographic shifts. The clearest, most rigorous, and most useful conceptual element I’ve seen is the idea of a “demographic dividend” that relates to the ratio of working to non-working people in your population. If you have tons of kids, you have a low ratio. Then a several decades later you have a situation where those kids are middle-aged and their parents are retired. If the middle-aged people shift to having small families, then you have a very high ratio of workers to non-workers, which is good for growth. But then several decades after that, you might once again have a slow-growth low-ratio situation.

Check out this chart:

This seems to do useful work in explaining the current East Asian boom.

On the other hand, it also implies that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the demographic situation in Europe has generally been more favorable to growth than it has in the United States and that this trend should continue into the 2030s.

Somewhat relatedly, this post by Claus Vistesen makes the case that Japan’s population aging/decline dynamic is inextricably linked to the export-orientation of the economy. This makes a lot of sense to me.

The Declining Significance of Reagan Voters

Reader J.C. emails in:

Your colleagues over at ThinkProgress have a post up talking about Limbaugh’s speech at CPAC. In his address, Limbaugh claims that Dems can’t “can’t accomplish what they want unless they appeal to Reagan voters,” and for years, I would have agreed with him; but it seems to me that younger voters – of whom I am one – are not nearly as enamoured with the cowboy president as our parents were. Public opinion of Reagan is gradually changing, and he seems to get more criticism for his mistakes now than he did during and directly following his presidency. All those calls for his head to be on Rushmore or the $100 bill have quieted as his domestic and economic policies appear more and more problematic.

So here is a question for you: How many of the Reagan voters have come out from under the spell of the Great Communicator? Perhaps more specifically, how many of the people who voted for Reagan are now dead, replaced by Obama voters? Some cold, hard numbers could help fight Limbaugh’s dictums, or at least our perception of the validity of those claims.

I think this nails the basic problem with nostalgia for the Reagan electoral coalition. When Reagan won in 1980, the younger people allowed to vote were born in 1962. In the last election, voters who are at least that old were somewhat more than half the electorate and John McCain did fine with this group:

Specifically, McCain won about 51 percent of the vote among the approximately 53 percent of the electorate that was at least 45 years old. But Obama won a decisive victory among Americans younger than 45—precisely none of whom were part of Ronald Reagan’s original coalition, and few of whom were part of his 1984 re-election campaign. Four years from now, Americans who were too young to vote in 1980 will be an even larger share of the electorate. Obviously, one could link this to other changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of the electorate and specific generational differences in point-of-view on environmental and gay rights issues.

College: Most Go, Only a Minority Graduate

In a post this morning, I said that only a minority of Americans go to college. That’s wrong. According to Census data, 42.4% of adults 25 to 64 report their highest level education as high school or less while 17.3% report their highest level of education as “some college, no degree.” Consequently, a majority of Americans attend college, but only about 40 percent of Americans graduate from a four-year institution. I’m reliably informed that only a minority of Americans attend a four-year institution at all.

Politics Without Minorities

Ross Douthat sketches out a vision of American politics in which it seems that everyone’s a non-hispanic white:

Here I’m starting from the premise that American politics has been fitfully sorting itself into a meritocracy-versus-populism dynamic, with one party (the Democrats) dominated by the mass upper class and the other party (the GOP) representing the middle and working-class voters who resent this newish elite, for good reasons and for bad.

You can see where he’s coming from. But what’s happened to the staff at the Safeway on my block? These are unionized workers, mostly black, mostly female—it’s a pretty hard-core Democrat-loving group. Nor do the good people of José Serrano’s congressional district seem to me to be members of the “mass upper class.”

Now perhaps what Ross means is that the Democratic Party is “dominated” by the mass upper class in the sense that the leaders of the Democratic Party establishment tend to come from the party’s upscale wing rather than its downscale wing. That’s true—to a first approximation the leadership is a multiracial group of lawyers from fancy schools. But by the same token it’s also true that the Republican Party is dominated by its upscale wing. Johnny Isakson may in some sense “represent” a middle-and-working class constituency but his personal fortune is valued in the $8-24 million range. Mitch McConnel who likes to play a Europe-hating rube in TV is in the $3-13 million range.

Long story short, the fact of the matter is that Republican voters are richer on average than Democratic voters.

Fake Virginia

Google’s election maps gallery allows us to understand the folly of Republicans writing off Northern Virginia as “fake.” Take a look at the Bush-Kerry results in the region:

As you can see, Bush actually carried the two outer suburban counties Loudon and Prince William. And though Fairfax County ultimately went for Kerry, it was by a reasonably close 53-46 margin. Since this is also Virginia’s biggest county in terms of population, the difference between winning 46 percent and winning 43 percent is pretty significant. And it doesn’t help your case to dismiss it out of hand as alien territory.

Meanwhile, the demographic breakdown is interesting:

A well-to-do suburban county ought to be decent territory for the GOP. But note that along with an about average number of African-Americans and Hispanics, Fairfax has a large Asian population. Consequently, the white plurality is a smaller white plurality than you see nationwide. And consequently, the Republicans lose. That, however, is the general direction in which the United States is heading — slowly but surely growing a little less white and therefore a little less Republican.

Chocolate City De-Chocolatizing

Rob Goodspeed does a basic projection of demographic trends, and suggests that DC will shift from majority black to plurality black in 2014:

Given demographic trends since 2000, the District of Columbia will no longer have a Black majority somewhere around 2014. That’s what I found after completing a simple projection using U.S. Census population data from the 1990 and 2000 census, and 2006 and 2007 American Community Survey population estimates. No matter the approach (trends since 1990 or 2000, projecting population numbers or percentages), every projection found somewhere around 2014 would be the turning point when D.C. would enter a new racial era where no major group could claim a majority.

Since 1990, the Black share of the D.C. population has fallen 11.2%. That decline was made up by increases in four other categories: White (6.2%), Asian (1.2%), other (2.2%), and two or more races (1.6%). The U.S. Census Bureau allowed respondents to select multiple races for the first time in 2000, and asks separate questions for race and ethnicity. Over the same time period, the percent reporting Hispanic ethnicity has increased 2.9%.

Interesting stuff. A related development that will probably have a more concrete impact on the city will be the need to redraw the ward boundaries after the 2010 census. The nature of the recent population turnover in the city has been for some neighborhoods, especially east of the Anacostia, to lose population while others have gained a lot.