11 May 2010

formula

Goes I say X, then you say Y.

Left entirely unsaid and unremarked upon in the second article is how we might reduce heavy reliance on abortion to "make the liberal/blue state family model" work, precisely the point of the first article. In other words, the reply is not a reply at all, but simply a formulaic statement of position without reaction or commentary.

The success of family models as portrayed in "blue states" is not because the success of the family model relies upon abortion, but because those families are delayed through planning and access to birth control. Birth control of course is a much less popular line of attack than abortion for conservatives. Thus why it wasn't mentioned at all by the reply and instead the line of attack continued unabated as though it was abortion that was the principle and only means of family planning being used. Wealthier liberals (and conservatives for that matter) have legal and economic access to birth control and thus don't have abortions, certainly not at the rates that they are supposedly doing. Poor single mothers don't tend to have legal or economic access, particularly in highly conservative states which have restricted access to birth control (and abortions, as what I might call an extreme form of birth control) or where legal rights have empowered doctors to avoid prescriptions for birth control on moral grounds and there are likely fewer available doctors who would compete against this moral grounding in rural or conservative towns. The only reason such a system thus "relies on abortion" is that it has deprived the model of its first lines of defence; economic opportunity being one as it delays the onset of families or children, and access to birth control being the primary.

I suppose you could attack "yuppie sluts" on the grounds that they are running about having sex instead of the mythology that they are having abortions. But that is not a line of objection I am all that concerned with or likely to be convinced is the cause of a problem. Particularly when it doesn't show itself to be causing the doom and demise of the American family as the matter of greater concern to most people anyway than who, how, why, and how often single women privately bed others. The principle harbinger of doom is that single poor women have more children (because of lack of access to education and employment opportunities and because of lack of access to birth control), and that many such women, because of cultural and social attitudes, are compelled to marry earlier or to people that they should not get married to, for reasons such as "we have a kid". I would prefer children be raised in a biological environment on the assumption that their parents care deeply about each other and presumably their offspring as a result, but barring the likely success of such a case, I could care less who the mother and father will be, or even that a child has one of each or both.

14 comments:

Tragedy101 said...

The EIC and the Child Tax Credit don't play a major role in the number of live births?

Sun Tzu said...

Probably distorts the incentives for poor people not to have more children yes.

What does that have to do with complaining about abortion though, where the rates are still higher among the people who would be right along the line for those tax credits?

Sun Tzu said...

Or more topically, what does it have to do with complaining about yuppies who supposedly have abortions and not children?

Tragedy101 said...

It is not the inaccessability of birth control or centers for abortive measures that diferentiates red/blue stable families.

Religious poor have always had more kids than the irreligious. With the government incentives for singles with multiple children, laws against polygamy, controversy over whether marriage is a right or a priviledge, dis-incentives for married couples tax-wise, and the general acceptance of the unwed living together; many religious people marry in non-legally binding agreements. And thus avoid all of the governmental meddling. Which causes the appearance of unstable family units.

Sun Tzu said...

How many is "many". I have a number of married associates, some of whom are of considerable religious affiliations, and all of them have legally sanctioned marriages. Nobody went without. I know there are some people who use the single child tax provisions as a scam but remain with their biological partners in crime, as it were. But this hardly seems like it would be common. The percentage of "unmarried" people according to census data is exceedingly low across the country. Usually less than 5-6% past the age of 40, with a precipitous drop for women in particular from 30 to 35. With the 5-6% being roughly the estimate of the homosexual population, this would be difficult to grant 100% of the unwed as either homosexuals or as the highly religious absentee or the corruptly incentivized scammers.

If this is a concentrated effect of religious ceremony trumping secular authority and legal certification, then it's possible this would matter. I'm not sure that it would be concentrated enough in "red states" to create a cultural bubble that would overpower rates of teenage pregnancy and divorce being higher. It's plausible, given that Utah, as a sort of odd cultural outlier already, is considered as an outlier to the broader trend in this direction being outlined, and I could certainly be convinced that general religiosity or general irreligiousity would be responsible for some of the differences in behaviors and attitudes toward "shotgun weddings" or the use of birth control (and abortion) in particular because the data is well supported and studied on these topics. I'm not so sure that they result in a broad trend of religious absenteeism from legal marriage and I'd need to see some statistics. So far, from checking census data, I'm seeing that the pattern of distribution for these "unmarried" people, on the generous assumption that they perhaps have "illegal" partners, is too diffuse between regions and across the red-blue divide. Indeed, the percentage of "never married" was often much higher, and as reported showed statistically significant delays, in blue state regions like the NE corridor over considerable religious regions like the South. Or especially the West for that matter (the MW was in the midpoint). It's possible that the data used is distinct, for instance that people might report to the census a marriage without a legal certification. But this would still have to contend with higher divorce and teen pregnancy rates in such regions and states as might be expected to over-report such things, or to under-report their marriage to the state for legal recognitions.

Sun Tzu said...

Somewhat significantly, "Blue state" people are noted to be in states of cohabitation, often extended, prior to marriage or family foundation. I don't see what the difference between this arrangement and a legally nebulous (but religiously sanctioned) marital status is. Religiously sanctioned marriages, those with a measurable legal sanction as well, are falling apart at roughly the same rates as these merely secular arrangements.

Finally, so far as I can tell, the debate that Douthat and Larimore entered into (Marcotte was talking about something else entirely) centered statistically around teenage pregnancies. I'm not an expert on the issue you raise about marriage law "evasion" so I can't say how it might impact these statistics. But I assume their debating tactic is to get around the problem of 1) abortion rates, which are actually somewhat spread out (Texas has a lot of them per capita even, more if you control for white populations over Hispanics, who have far fewer abortions, and which overall are generally unaffected by marital or child/childless status) and 2) marriage rates (which is, in part, the issue you raise which may or may not be relevant).

The problem is that it doesn't get around birth control use rates because all of the states with the highest teen pregnancy rates are "Red" States. Even the rate of reduction in this stat is much higher in blue states. My guess, in part, for much of this difference, if you must have a non-directly birth control related cause, would be immigration and higher concentrations of Hispanics, particularly in the South and West. And these would be likely a population that would try to acquire as many legal protections as they could for their residency status by legally marrying other people or by having children (a condition which in part guards against deportations because of our aversion to breaking up families as a result of immigration policy).

I comfortably assume, perhaps too easily, that there are significant religious/secularist divisions between these regions and that these may indeed result in some unexpected behaviors, such as anti-statist marriage. But I'm not convinced that they do so in a empirically meaningful way. For among other reasons, the fact that I know anti-statists who are not at all religious and know many religious people who are all too comfortable with the authority of the state over marital and sexual habits in particular.

Tragedy101 said...

The assumption that this problem is caused by single poor women having a lack of education, employment opportunities, or access to birth control appears to me as ludicrous as my afore made statement. (Which I assumed would appear even more ridiculous. Alas! I have failed.)

I don't think these are the causes, so how can I take the rest of this seriously?

The premise is false, thus GIGO.

Sun Tzu said...

So you are supposing that there is no distinction between the "liberal blue state family" and the "conservative red state family", even though there appears to be considerable statistical evidence to the contrary on a number of data points which suggests otherwise? Or you are supposing that the explanation being used here is so worthless as to render that data meaningless or at least still with some other as yet un-suggested explanation?

I'm not sure I follow what your claim is other than that you seem intent on disagreeing or otherwise attempting to inject levity into a topic you find boring and distasteful.

Sun Tzu said...

Put a little less harshly, my concern here is not so much a disagreement, it is a disagreement without explanation.

Tragedy101 said...

I am ashamed of my response. Here is my muddled thoughts that brought about my comments.

A small percentage (maybe 40%) of the population of any state actually voted in your blue/red state division. This is clearly misleading.

The statistics on abortion are misleading, because the different statistics define abortion differently. So the claim of higher abortion rates is statistically unknown. Some define abortion (of fetus) while others define abortion (of pregnancy) and even when they decide what they are aborting there are significant variations in definition.

Young urban professional sluts is a little redundant. Is it because prostitution is legal in those states?

What evidence is given for poor single women lacking access to education, employment, or birth control?

There is greater evidence that:

1) Our government gives incentives for having between 1 and 5 children in the form of EIC, CTC, welfare and other programs. (1st comment)

2) Our government gives dis-incentives in the form of paying taxes and less government support, if a poor person makes more money.

3) Our government gives incentives for filing as Head of Household. Families with several children and low incomes have a great incentive to lose a spouse. (2nd comment)

4) Our government gives incentives for illegal immigrants to marry citizens.

5) Our government gives incentives to illegal immigrants to have babies here in our country.

6) Dealing with men is less frustrating, if you can make them leave.

7) Beliefs of others will not secure long term decisions.

8) Public scorn is not as bad for the single mother as previously. It's still pretty bad. (2nd comment)

9) Our government does a better job of forcing non-contributing spouses to pay child support than previously.

All of these issues are issues in both color of states.

Is the claim that red states have poorer education for single women, true?

Or that they have less employment opportunities for single women?

Or that they offer less birth control for single women?

The claims made don't match the statistics on either side as far as I can figure out.

It was your claim that "where legal rights have empowered doctors to avoid prescriptions for birth control on moral grounds and there are likely fewer available doctors who would compete against this moral grounding in rural or conservative towns." Brought up a question: Why are there so many abortion doctors living, here?

The man killed in Kansas was a resident of Kansas. The doctor overseeing the clinic in Queens of the fatal abortion last year is a resident of Nebraska. There are more abortion doctors residing in "red" states than in "blue" states. Why? I think: Taxes.

Sun Tzu said...

Prostitution is only legal, so far as I know, in Nevada (kind of an odd state politically) and Rhode Island. Everywhere else it's technically illegal and gets a frowny face. I thus wouldn't go about calling young urban professional women who have sex (outside of marriage) sluts or compare them to prostitutes. They tend not to like the title and it's a very different job description and behavior set. Personally I wouldn't even call a prostitute a slut or a whore. I save that insult for Congress.

Sun Tzu said...

Poor single women tend to grow up in poor neighbourhoods because in richer neighbourhoods parents will have money to support them or to provide birth control (or abortions). Education in those neighbourhoods sucks. The evidence for that entire thread of reasoning is so overwhelming that I shudder to imagine that you are unaware of it. Pretty much every economist simply takes it for granted on principle that I am aware of that the distribution of human capital falls out in that way. It's also extremely logical to assume that money is required to have access to effective medical care or prescription birth control. Free condoms are one thing, doctor monitored effective medicines are another, as is appropriate information and disclosure on the use of condoms or birth control pills/devices given to teenagers and women in particular. That last point, as with the access to abortions, is a matter of local and state laws and social cultural matters. People in Kansas or Nebraska may have the only late or partial birth abortion clinics out there which must be galling to people who oppose such abortions (as I'm sure many Kansas or Nebraska residents do, just as many NYC residents do). What they don't have is widespread local access to early abortions; which are statistically far, far more common (again, which would be the most logical feature of the procedure). What this does in the South for example is mean that people cross state lines to states with less restrictive laws over access to abortion. Southern states in particular have used all manner of government regulation, zoning codes, parental consent, etc to restrict access to abortion facilities. It's not a matter of keeping "different records" down there. There aren't records to keep because there aren't very many clinics. I would have to argue against the idea that there are therefore more abortion doctors residing in red states, even for tax purposes. The evidence is against that. As are state laws. And as is the prevalence of abortions. You have to consider all abortions being performed; not merely the ones people find most objectionable.

It is however eminently possible that there are "red state" or "blue state" regions where education is superior, economic opportunity is better, or inferior or where access to birth control is better or worse. That particular claim can be considered more of a stretch, particularly the generalisation involved. It's also true that access to birth control does not guarantee people's incentives will then be not to have children "before they should", as it were. But it is pretty clear that there are different rates of teenage pregnancy in such states. There is partly a cultural/religious and partly economic/education causes for that. Those differences can be measured. Obviously some "red states" have people who don't vote or who are "blue state voters" living there. However people have been increasingly clustered around culturally similar neighbourhoods. This would tend to mean that some states, say Utah, are very "red" and some states, say Massachusetts, are very "blue". Comparisons between states like these on the relevant statistics may be valid for that reason.

Sun Tzu said...

Government policies have interfered here in potentially negative ways on the logic that we should encourage people to have and start families (by having children). It's very hard legally and morally to then draw an arbitrary line to say to people "and you shall have no more spawned beings from your loins" once that policy is taken up. I question the need to encourage people further to have children, because it seems like we have many selfish and cultural reasons to do so without more external encouragement. But I do think if the state exists, there is a legitimate purpose or use of it (locally especially) to help families manage a little easier (especially the poor ones). I suspect changing the tax code so it favors married couples with children would be a bit too much, but at the very least it should not be biased against them. I'm not quite sure why that is so hard to fix. You'd think married people would have plenty of paid advocates.

I assume part of the incentive for illegal immigrants (and legal ones for that matter) is to avoid deportation and secure residency status. Which my response would be "why do they want to live here and why are we so opposed to them doing so that we are making that so difficult that their entry pass is secured by marriage licenses or birth certificates rather than a simpler method?" That problem is much easier to resolve.

Sun Tzu said...

I suspect also the red/blue state aspect is used because it's one people understand as already existing and this is throwing off the assumptions involved. What I think the book is actually talking about is more like the cultural difference between liberals and conservatives. "Liberals" being typically educated people who seem to like crazy things like free markets a lot more (though not enough for my liking) than ordinary or stereotypical blue state Democratic voters (say union workers or impoverished minorities subsisting on welfare). Poor people, regardless of how they vote express a disdain for "capitalism" and a tolerance of "socialism", which we might be led to think of as encapsulating the "liberal agenda". I think of "liberals" or "progressives" as the "elite" wing of the Democratic party with a collection of fuzzy ideas, some of which are bad, some are probably decent or at least well-intentioned, and most are ignored or completely irrelevant to the base of "blue state" voters. Perhaps that definition is incorrect, but it was more or less what I think the authors are trying to convey as their subsets being studied.

What they appear to be discussing is a set of life choices and their influence on family "success" rather than the political persuasions. The net effect as far as political science would be something like how "conservatives" reacted to Sarah and Bristol Palin as people and as stories versus how "liberals" did, and then look for why that difference occurred. There are a few statistical clues. It's not clear that they are useful for parsing out Democratic voters over Republican ones or the overall election process as we normally think of it. This is why I've been trying to use "blue state" and "red state" in quotes.