After 1964 and the Civil Rights Act, the Solid Democratic South became the Solid Republican South. There was no sea change rearing up in any direction. It was a wholesale, pretty much instant conversion. It’s very hard to draw out any regional/political, urban/rural, conservative/liberal, Dem/GOP relationships corresponding to any election since that watershed year.

If someone in the Solid South voted Democratic prior to 1964, would it mean that they were more liberal? Or just that they were still following the Confederate mind/set which would rather die than vote Republican? If someone voted Republican in that region, would it have meant that they were conservative, or that they were voting against the Dixiecrats? Would party voting tell us anything about urban/rural differences or similarities? There would be no way to distinguish between two sorts of motivation, so no conclusions about that region could be drawn, at least not in the same way as afterwards.

Wouldn’t the German portion of Texas be another one of these pockets?

That’s a good post.

Swedes (as well as Germans) are also heavy drinkers and Norwegians are teetotalers. A big split in the American Lutheran Church happened because of Norwegian American support for prohibition as opposed to German and Swedish Lutherans who did not support it.

Isn’t this just common sense? The lower the IQ the easier they are to seduce. Probably a truism throughout history.

Reblogged this on Philosophies of a Disenchanted Scholar.

You’ve got it Hudi. All these financial and education realities are making childbearing all but a pipe dream for ambitious, moral and achievement-oriented young people of the lower-middle and middle class. Those whose parents paid the costs of their education can have children and those who never went to college can have children. We really are becoming a bottom heavy society – all breeding done at the lowest levels with a bit at the top – and again, it is the middle class which suffers. Society does too.

Ireland’s fertility rate has been falling. I see one source gives it as 2.01 for 2013:

http://www.indexmundi.com/ireland/total_fertility_rate.html

I suspect ‘liberal’ isn’t the core issue, but that feminism is. Obviously the quest for gender equality leads to a situation in which the man is supposed to not pursuit his career a 100% but to take time of to take care of kids and the household. The open minded men probably agree with this in principle….but…when they think a little longer they realize that they really don’t like to do it…because it goes against their instincts, they’re men. So they make up all kinds of reasons why it is not the time to have kids yet. They just don’t want to face the fact that the only ‘solution’ to their aversion to being tortured by having to take care of little children is to have a traditional marriage because that would get into trouble with their spouse.

This is a strange “straw vulcan” perspective on rationality.

Rationality is not a synonym for selfishness – An irrational belief is at odds with the evidence. An irrational action is at odds with producing likely outcomes that you value. An irrational value is… not a coherent concept. In other words you can believe something irrationally, you can do something irrationally, but you can’t *want* something irrationally, provided it is at least coherent. I want the future world to be a good one, even if I don’t get to see it, and that isn’t irrational.

Do you genuinely model religious people as thinking “Oh I’ll do this good thing, even though the outcome will happen after I die, because I’ll be able to watch the outcome from heaven and feel happy about it then”? That the only reason for it is your own personal enjoyment decades from now in the afterlife? I don’t think religious people think that way at all, I think they think “I’ll do this because it’s a good thing, even though I won’t see the outcome, because I know it’s a good thing to do and that makes me happy now”. And I think atheists think in the exact same way.

Women who have 2 children and work full time spend less one on one time with them than a woman with many children who stay at home.

Interesting. I’ve recently become pretty fascinated by all this. What you don’t know is that Norway has a large libertarianist party with a bent towards professionals and smart craftspeople/small business and they breed like bunnies. They’re all for tolerance, drug legalization, LGBT and so on, but I find that typically they’re pretty straight-laced and common-sense personally.

So I think you need to separate the libertarians out. They have a conscious goal to have more kids but are still an outlier so they confound these studies IMHO. For example, they value education AND having larger families of 3 or up, attract higher IQ while not attracting no low-end average IQ’s. Also, they’re now a world culture (most are in Asia) since their leader got them on track back in the early 70’s ( he has 4 kids, I think, and very high IQ; and his wife is very bright). They’re specifically dedicated to a robot-run economy of leisure ( See http://www.libertarianinternational.org ) and are organizing the Highest IQ.

I was recently at a conference and they were joking that they would prevail because ‘at this rate’ they’ll be the last ones left who could still read and had more kids.

Also, 115 IQ isn’t low. It’s over the average and 5-7 points above the preferred minimum for college-level work.

New evidence of Danes taking a proactive approach to fertility: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2590585/Do-Denmark-Hilarious-travel-video-calls-couples-sex-boost-countrys-population.html

Those same people (or people among them) created the Enlightenment. Yes, they have their limitations but they are unique and valuable in terms of not only IQ but also creative and civic-minded thinking. Others may eventually take their place but that could take centuries, or not happen at all. Look at the world outside Northwest Europe and its descendants – that’s what you’d be left with if they left the gene pool. So let’s not throw out the baby (the WEIRD liberal) with the bathwater (the Blank Slate and similar flawed ideas).

Why should I bemoan the absence of children among blank-slatists? I don’t care what someone’s IQ is if their judgment is so poor that they adhere to such a ridiculous belief.

Will flouride lower your baby’s IQ?

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/02/harvard-study-confirms-fluoride-reduces-childrens-iq.html

“It turns out that parenting doesn’t matter as much as we think. Indeed, short of extreme abuse or neglect, parents don’t affect how their children turn much at all. This includes not only children’s intelligence or their broad personality traits, but their life outcomes (including the things that “reallyâ€� matter), like how much they earn, or whether or not they get in trouble with the law. This even includes how fat or thin they become, as was the subject of my second post (Should Parents Lose Custody of Obese Kids?). It also doesn’t matter if they grow up with a father present or with a single mother. It doesn’t matter if their parents are gay or straight. All those things are symptoms, of the true causes, not causes in themselves (the true cause being heredity).”

– OK. Since you’ve got a kid now yourself, Jayman, why not test this all out? Don’t abuse or neglect him, but don’t do much in the way of guidance or education either. No taking him to museums or science centers. You don’t even have to enroll him in school. Too much input after all. Just teach him very basic reading, writing and arithmetic, up to a minimal functional level. When he’s a teen do not, I repeat do not, attempt to teach him any ethics around sexuality. We’ll all check back on the experiment right here on this blog in the year 2034.

You game?

Oh, I see you dealt with this by pointing out that in the absence of immigration, the population shrinks leading to lower housing costs which boosts fertility.

“Now, at this point, I know one criticism that will be leveled at me is that the increase in the non-White share of the population will make it unlikely that Republicans will be able to capture the presidency, as was the main rant after the last election. However, I think it’s unclear if that will be the case. ”

“However, it’s my suspicion that the non-White vote that buttresses the Democrats can only hold out so long against an increasingly Right-leaning White populace.”

Why? Non-white fertility rates project to be higher than white ones well in to the period when the US becomes a majority-minority country.

Plus, another key issue is the proportion of children who become more liberal than their parents vs. more conservative. Certainly on social issues, there has been more of a shift left than right when you go down through the generations since WWII.

Sorry, a few typos. “We are IN an era where brute force is no longer necessary.”

Very Interesting. I see it all the time, but I can give you my theory. Males always have to be attractive for females in order for there to be offspring. Before the advent of our technological era, physical strength meant protection from danger for women.The trade-off was having children. Most of these women (ultra-liberals) through-out the centuries were persuasive and very intelligent. They would disseminate gossip in order to get with the man that they wanted, in order to live a life of luxuries (whether a king, or a vassal, etc) Children came somewhat second, but it was instinct to take care of your children, who represent a part of you. Normal women on the other hand (the ones who really love men and company and a family and are not so interested in luxuries) were more plentiful in the past, since men would prefer to be with a woman such as this, than than with a smart woman who might actually plot against him in the future. None-the-less, at the beginning of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution begun, and our way of life began to really kick off, population began to explode, and this was a perfect breeding ground for intelligent women, in order for them to survive and attain luxuries (there were many more men who had new innovative manual jobs.) However, now came the technological era, in which women can now work and make their own money. There is no need for these women to have men, since all they really care about is luxury and their own well being. There is no more “children” trade off. We are living in the last centuries of these intelligent women, who will cease to exist in a mere 10 generations, since they compete with men (instead of working with them) in order to take care of themselves. The selective trait that will survive in the future, is that of the “conservative” (genetically) woman, or rather, women who instinctively need a man (or company) just to not kill themselves out of loneliness. We are not in an era where brute force is no longer necessary, Men always have to be a bit stronger (or better) than women, if the human race is to survive. Therefore, since brute strength is no longer a quality that matters, it is through intelligence that man kind will survive. Therefore, we need to figure out what the balance is. Whatever the balance was in terms of the work output of men vs women in the past (which we can measure economically now) in brute strength, we must now measure in mental ability… it is very likely that in the future, in order for humans to survive, women will have to be so dumb that they won’t even know how to set an alarm clock… since they will be impressed with the way that a man can set it, and therefore, have children with him. (Women ALWAYS need to be impressed with a man… never the opposite… that’s just science.)

Couple of points.

1. Technical. I don’t think the survey methods (due to their biases and limitations) are capable of small scale resolution of fertility – indeed, I don’t think we ever can know this. In other words we cannot in practice confidently distinguish between mildly-eugenic, neutral and mildly-dysgenic fertility. This is exacerbated by the fact that these are changing pretty rapidly over time – so the current situation is always inaccessible. I think we can only be confident about extremes of positive and negative fertility.

2. “Now, while sample sizes across the board are generally small, we see an interesting pattern. As the previous data breaking down fertility by IQ and by sex show, fertility is dysgenic for women and roughly neutral for men by IQ. ”

Yes, at least wrt women – but overall if we look at human history there is underlying a strongly dysgenic pattern in reproductive success increasing over the past 200 years – which is partly differential fertility, and partly differential mortality: i.e. RS is a product of births and deaths.

In the past (in complex agrarian societies) all classes and groups has positive fertility, but groups with the lowest intelligence and conscientiousness had nearly 100 percent child mortality.

Now that child mortality has been functionally abolished (so low as to make little difference in most of the world, and so low as not to prevent population growth even in the very poorest parts of the world – such that the groups with the highest child mortality are also the groups with the highest reproductive success) there is a truly massive underlying dysgenic effect – with literally billions of deleterious-mutation-carrying children surviving to reproduce, who would have died before maturity in all previous societies.

The load of deleterious mutations in the human gene pool *must* be increasing incrementally, generation upon generation.

So change in differential fertility over the past 200 years is one cause of dysgenesis, but changes in differential child mortality over this period are likely to be even more important.

just… awesome blog. awesome.

High IQ individuals are much better for society than low IQ people are bad. The positive contribution to society that a great scientist provides is way more than the drain on society that a person on welfare causes. Even if there were twice as many people the US with an IQ < 75 their drain on society would be substantial but technological progress would march on at rate not so much lower than the present since there would still be just as many scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs.

This is pretty critical, reducing the fertility rate of immigrants and low IQ people is fine but if you can't simultaneously boost the fertility rate of high IQ people it won't do society much good. That second step is ridiculously hard and I don't know how to solve it. The problem is that for a high IQ individual, the opportunity cost of having a child is enormous. Even if having a child was free, you still have to give up a very large amount of earning potential to have one.

That’s because the southern racists joined the GOP.

That tidal wave is confine to the south because the whites up north come from a different culture. Have you noticed that the GOP has been losing (not gaining) seats in the north since a generation ago?

Isn’t the upper Midwest a bit of a swing region. I think Sailers whole “keep republicans relevant another cycle or two” strategy involved going after white voters in those regions. They are still swing states.

Ronald Reagan came from not far from the Midlands region of the Midwest, from Dixon, Illinois. He probably is the most prominent representative who exemplifies the temperament of the region. There were some utopian communities setup in that part of the country, such as the Amana one in Iowa, so those might have been liberal-minded, after a fashion. However, I would hazard a guess that the only real reason why some Democratic voters have remained in such parts–for now–would relate back to the fact that a tidal wave of sea change has been rearing up from the South, and will continue well North. Remember when the “Solid South” meant Democratic?

“I could easily see middle Americans embracing a socialist system if they think it would help them.”

I think you make an interesting point. Look at the Progressive era. Look at William Jennings Bryan, George Norris, and Henry A. Wallace. Look at the prairie populism during the depression that produced the only socialist banking system in the US (The Bank of North Dakota). I think ‘middle America’ will always be a bit socially conservative. Economic conservatism, on the other hand, does not have a lock on the region.

You have to consider what words like “liberal” and “conservative” mean. You say you are liberal, but most liberals, I believe, would disagree. There are three main “political” issues that I look at when talking about the the left-right divide. There is the divide between “nationalists” and “internationalists.” There is the divide between cultural liberals and cultural conservatives on attitudes toward sex and marriage. And then there is economics. Which one of those things is not like the other? A feminist who wants a society where women will be promiscuous wants that because THAT is her utopia. A conservative who believes in traditional marriage wants that because THAT is her utopia. The feminist and the traditional conservative want radically different ends. In contrast, most fiscal conservatives and fiscal socialists honestly believe that their system will help the poor better. They disagree on the means, but they agree on the ends. I could easily see middle Americans embracing a socialist system if they think it would help them. I don’t think fiscal conservatism is programmed into them.

Hey WP-

I’m probably the ‘whitest’ guy possible, genetically speaking. I ancestry.com’d my family last year back to 1200’s Sweden. (The nick I’m using is one of my ancestors.) I do get what you’re trying to say, though separating out the prescriptive from the descriptive is a bit difficult for me. And I do understand that there are some issues with too multiculturalism as an ideal. For one thing, there’s Gause’s Law of Exclusion where different species can not occupy the same space at the same time, and that this can apply to human races as well as species. Multicultural societies are ephemeral, fleeting things. The brief flame burns brightly.

But I don’t think you can look to Scandinavian Midlanders or the Midlands in general to hop on board for any of this “White unitary nationalismâ€� stuff. In fact, with respect, that kind of talk weirds me the hell out. Just speaking for myself, I feel more affinity for my neighbor, for my city, for my region and for my country than a set of 30-100 proposed genes that code for an oxidative tyrosine derivative expression that we collectively decide to call “raceâ€�. I think if you look at the history of the Midland…if some full-on “race warâ€� erupts or whatever it is you’re warning about, we’ll most likely become a refugee belt, a new Trail of Tears where people without enough melanin in their skin make their way to the only place they can live in peace. Kind of the purpose we’ve always served. You realize that we have more in common with Ontario, Canada (both “mosaic societiesâ€� founded by the same exact settler cultures)? So maybe the Midlands will be re-united again, our brothers in the north joining us again, and we can be a safe haven for anyone who wants to work hard, pay their fair share, and try to lead a decent life, regardless of whatever the Bitter Ulcer of White Rage thinks about the matter.

Jayman —

My sense is that these attitudes are likely to change, rapidly. After all, massive Mexican immigration is hitting even upper Yankeedom and New France, as well as lots of Africans and such. Dump a bunch of Somalis into Vermont, and even the most hard-core liberals don’t like being the victim of vibrancy. Then there is the financial aspect. Not only does massive vibrancy bring person security issues to places that did not have them, and cause mental stress on avoiding crime-think as to the causes, it means radically decreased opportunity for one’s kids as “Public Ivies” turn into say, UCI, when went from nearly all-White enrollment in the 1980’s to about 17% today. And that’s Irvine California.

Now you have the Obama Administration full onto Agenda 21 including massive wealth transfers, and the new HUD policy aimed essentially at Section 8 housing everywhere but Malibu and the Upper East Side. If the economy were constantly rising and people could afford a new house every ten years, no problem. Uh oh.

My view is we will shortly test Roissy’s theory of Diversity + Proximity = War. And also see a rise in White unitary nationalism, i.e. New England Nation, Yankeedom, the Midlands, New Scandinavia etc. will all dissolve into White Nation as most of the White Middle Class is smacked with diversity, pays the price literally and figuratively for vibrancy, and sees the upward ladder not only kicked out but faces downward mobility. Which is the classic definition of pre-Revolutionary conditions.

White rural liberals existed because they did not face defacto ethnic cleansing by non-Whites. That is no longer the case, and the ethnic cleansing comes not in the 1950’s-60’s era of rising income, but declining. Meaning loss of a home to anti-White crime (think 5,000 Somalis dumped in Burlington VT) can’t be mitigated into a nicer house in the suburbs. It means a nasty apartment somewhere else for those cleansed who take a permanent loss. You know what Machiavelli advised regarding this. The traditional ethnic “nations” of America have never before faced such massive, and inescapable non-White stress.

Look at the Upper Piedmont. The inescapable conclusion is that Whites in high-density areas vote “White” (aka non-Liberal) to prevent transfer of resources away from themselves to … Blacks. And resources are not just monetary. Take the attitude towards guns. Non Liberal Whites view guns as a weapon of last resort against murder, torture, robbery, and rape, not necessarily in that order, by non-Whites. This represents real history of Indian, Mexican, and Black attacks, as well as Mixed-Race non-Whites (like say John Murel, the “Land Pirate” whose treasure formed the basis of Tom Sawyer’s treasure, Twain in Life on the Mississippi quotes figures Murel may have murdered over 4,000 men as the leader of his group).

So far, social peace has been purchased by social mobility, and the ability of Whites including Scandinavians and Yankees and such to avoid the impact of mass Non-White presence and defacto privilege. The “Knockout Game” aka Polar Bear Hunting, by Black “teens” and “youths” is now nationwide, fueled by Youtube and WorldStarHipHop dot com, making social attitudes under severe pressure.

John Derbyshire worries about the elites “turning racist.” Far more likely IMHO is a sudden “snap” in attitudes by Scandinavian, Yankee (who are Scandi lite essentially), Midlands, and other peoples. Those not elite and knowing they are not on the elite ladder (no opportunity loss).

Interesting stuff. For what it’s worth, I actually consider many of these issues — including a discussion of Woodard — in my forthcoming book (http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9781138017740/). I should note that, while white Americans remain divided politically along ethnic lines, these divisions are shrinking — the political differences between WASPS and other whites are now much smaller than they were as recently as 1970. Whereas the gap between white Americans of British descent and Eastern and Southern European whites was once huge when it comes to party identification, it is smaller today.

Er, Warren Buffett that is…

I have family in both the really blue part of Iowa and the really red part of Nebraska, so this is a bit anecdotal. I’d probably second the notion that Scandinavian ancestry seems to be a factor in how ‘community minded’ someone is. (I’ve joked that you can guess someone’s political party here in Omaha by whether a person’s name ends in “-senâ€�, but that’s probably not accurate.) It’s hard to say what effect German ancestry might have. Honestly, I’ve never met anyone around here who’s full-blooded German without a bit of Danish or Swede or Scots in them. Everyone’s a mutt around here, many times over. So self-reported ancestry can be a bit tricky. Another complication is that most of the German culture of the Great Plains is Volga German, which is something totally different. The Worst Hard Time has a good bit on how they imported a frontier spirit forged on the Russian steppes onto the American prairie. You know that tumblin’ tumbleweed? That’s Russian thistle, brought by those crafty Germans from Russia. Their sociopolitical orientation was mostly your standard ‘live and let live’ variety, the opposite of the totalitarian mindset that too often finds its place in German intellectual circles. In fact, there’s actually actually a strong pacifist tradition among them, since many Volga Germans were Mennonite conscientious objectors. They were closer to being Amish than being Commies or Nazis. (Though not for lack of Hitler and Stalin trying. But that’s a tangent.)

Anyway, back to the Scandinavian influence. I wonder if Woodard might be underestimating the role that the code of Jante might be playing in Midlands culture. (Its stress on egalitarianism, thoughtfulness, living quietly, helping your neighbor, etc.) for example. At least that’s what I was always told as to why my family does things the way they do. But if that’s true, it’s a kind of mutated strain of Jante, different from the old country. There’s an undeniable and rigid commitment to fairness and equality, but virtually no emphasis on conformity that Staffan referred to. There’s the taboo against showing off, but no real respect for hierarchy, position, or authority.

I dunno. Just my two cents. Ultimately, if you want to try and understand the Midlands, just look at Warren Buffet. There’s probably no one alive who better encapsulates its values, and its bizarre myriad contradictions.

Yes, one might wonder about different Germans in different places. The Germans in Minnesota, ND and SD lean strongly to the right.

A lot of German communists fled Germany during the 19th Century crackdowns and ended up in Wisconsin.

It’s not relaxing to me, in the sense that most people don’t get it and may not be capable of getting it, so they will continue attempting to turn everyone else into them through whatever means they fancy. So much wasted effort, so much pointless argument.

~S

Jayman: “the heritable roots of these differences mean that the divisions among White Americans are largely intractable, and the divides we see will be with us – in one form or another – for a long time to come.”

Somehow I find that relaxing. We can forget about changing other people’s minds.

I’m guessing it might be like in Scandinavian countries where the overwhelming majority are liberal, so even when the most liberal leave for the city there is no dramatic change. We don’t have any conservative rednecks.

It might also be a matter of climate. I’m toying with the idea that sun people have evolved a pathogen avoidance along with the conservatism that is so clearly a part of it. Perhaps the climate contributes in a short-term as well in that it might trigger this avoidance. There is a rough correspondence between Big Five conscientiousness and heat index (heat and humidity) in America. I’d love to see some state-level stats on Haidt’s Purity foundation since that would be a more direct measure than conscientiousness, but I haven’t found anything so far.

Swedes are highly conformist, much more so than Norwegians. Many rooted for the Nazis when they looked as if they might win but then abruptly shifted to democratic socialism after the war.

I took a look at the counties in the Dakotas and Minnesota that went either Republican or Democratics in the last few presidential elections.

Counties in the Dakotas that tended to go Democratic in a presidential election were either:
1. Heavily Norwegian
2. Had a large Amerindian population.

Counties in the Dakotas that went Republican tended to have a large German population.

Counties in Minnesota that tended to go Democratic in a presidential election were either:
1. Heavily Norwegian
2. Had a large Amerindian population.
3. Had a very diverse population, particularly in the Twin Cities area, but also places like Deluth.

Counties in Minnesota that went Republican tended to have a large German population.

Surprisingly, in neither place did Swedes make much of a difference.

In response to JP, do respond specifically to points that I made, and then we can exchange like grown-ups rather than revert to name calling. I grew up in one of the most liberal parts of America (Montgomery County, MD), got an Ivy League education, and am back in the D.C. area. I have never met anyone in the KKK (or knew anyone who knew anyone in the KKK) and I know few bible-belt Christians. I am not even conventionally Christian although I do not recoil from Christians or fear them as you seem to.

Your post indicates to me nothing so much as a liberal bubble. This is why I believe liberalism (modern, not classical) has much in common with religious belief. I said nothing theological, did not quote the bible, did not invoke any deity and you already recoil, fearing you might see something which might expose your lovingly constructed mindset to heretical thoughts. Boo!

Follow up post here which discusses this some: http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/for-every-person-that-doesnt-want-kids-there-are-25-that-do-is-that-so/

(I changed my moniker since the days of being e)

“Women who feel they cannot personally afford to have more kids and who those who do not want to have a family seem to be the pretty clear reason for the gap.”

Not really. Conservatives are poorer, on average, than liberals, but conservatives have more children. Globally, the strong correlation between poverty and fertility could hardly be starker, with fertility extremely high in poor countries like Nigeria, and extremely low in wealthy countries like Japan.

Of course there’s that tricky “feeling” business. A person in the US with a moderate income might “feel” like they can’t afford kids even though they’re a thousand times wealthier than folks in Nigeria with 7 kids, because of some cultural or environmental factor, but even within the US,among people sharing fairly similar cultures and environments, we still see poor conservatives more willing to have children than wealthier liberals.

As for liberals not wanting children, that seems obvious enough.

(The big question there is why. I don’t think it is simply, as you seem to be saying, that people who happen not to want children call themselves liberals because it’s the liberals who happen to favor condoms and birth control (at the very least you’ve got yourself a chicken-and-egg issue there.) I think it goes far deeper than that, into people’s thoughts and relationships with the world.

To oversimplify a lot of neuroscience I’ve been reading, most people seem to have various feedback mechanisms in their brains which help them socialize and learn from others–basically they’re rewarded, mentally, for doing what other people are doing. Evolutionarily, this is a sound way to not eat poisonous berries. People with really strong feedback systems will tend to want strongly to do whatever everyone else in their society does–that is, they will tend to have conservative natures. People with weak feedback systems, like me, are Aspie. A related set of feedback runs through the parts of our brains which process disgust. I personally feel so little disgust, I was shocked to find out that it’s a real phenomenon for others. I’d always figured they were making it up. Anyway, people with large regions of their brains devoted to disgust process more of reality through their disgust filters and so, simply feel more disgust about stuff. These people are neo-phobic and tend to be conservative. People processing reality through other parts of their brain will feel less disgust and thus be open to more things. “Openness” and “liberality” are extremely correlated.

People with high desires for social conformity and low desires for novelty will probably generally be happy around other people very similar to themselves, which would generally be their families. (Even when he’s being dumb, my brother is still more like me than a random person off the street.) In general, I think this accounts for their high desire to be part of big families. Liberals, by contrast, simply like novelty and don’t really care much for being in big groups. Being part of a big family sounds like a burden, rather than a delight. But I’m obviously going out on a really speculative limb. )

The gap is real, but easily enough explained by common phenomena, such as people not wanting to say they have too many kids.

You’ve noticed a significant problem with the author’s logic. The question asked of people was not “how many children do you intend to have.” It was “what do you think is the ideal number of children for a family to have?” The latter term is a hypothetical; it is not asking about expectation at all. A respondent might say the ideal income for a family is at least, say, 200k. That’s all well and good, but that’s not the same as saying they expect to earn 200k for their family. Women who feel they cannot personally afford to have more kids and who those who do not want to have a family seem to be the pretty clear reason for the gap. They may think the ideal is around 3, but if they can only afford one, or they don’t want a family for themselves, well, there’s your gap. Further, women like that may tend to be liberal for some of the reasons cited, but probably more important is the same factor that drives the preponderance of people with advanced degrees to vote Democratic. When one party is simply very loudly ideologically opposed to what an individual perceives as their interest – be that birth control or science or burning fossil fuels or singing country music of any one of a long list of ludicrously polarized issues – that individual may tend to align themselves with the prevailing alternative paradigm. I just don’t see any expectation/reality gap.

JP, I follow this blog, and I’m a liberal. (As is JayMan himself.) Some of the readers are undoubtedly conservative, others liberal–not much different than, say, any other corner of the internet. Personally, I wouldn’t equate anyone here too much with mainstream ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ thought.

Since you’re responding directly to Dan’s post about liberal “theology”, do you have a specific objection to his claims? On most social issues, liberals and conservatives do divide between norms or policies which would create more children or fewer children. I don’t have to be anti-abortion (or pro-abortion) to recognize that more abortion = fewer children, less abortion = more children, for example. Different norms and values about childbearing and things related to family formation will of course show up as different #s of children. Whether that’s good, bad, or neutral is a matter of personal opinions.

Reading this blog really gives an awful impression of conservatives. While many people posting anonymously on the Internet seem to be pretty ignorant, at least liberals aren’t hypocritically “Christian” on top of all of it. If you want to live a life of rage against people you know nothing about, consider the KKK, not the GOP.

Someone with very strong personal opinions who is not able to compromise, distrusts others, and makes broad, ignorant statements about a hundred million people with whom she disagrees may or may not be a conservative, but she certainly sounds like someone who has trouble making friends.

Jayman, several weeks ago I made a comment on a survey you posted on your blog that purportedly divined the political leanings of the test participants. The following link is an example of the bias in so many surveys.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130811005342.htm

“Cathedral indoctrination� means feminism/socialism/progressivism, I think.

Interesting discussion. I am a male with high educational attainment (based on ACT and MCAT I qualify for MENSA – yippee!) with 6 children. We had kids before any education completion because we both enjoy children and I highly recommend it. The conventional wisdom on this seems odd, changing diapers in the middle of the night is no big deal when I need to show up for class or am in grad school. It is rather rough if I would have to do it in my 40s when I am teaching the classes.

I think if people are interested in changing the dynamics of societal IQ (which its not clear to me is a worthwhile goal) you could make changes by the margin, and “Nudge” people simply by not subsidizing births by the poor. If the costs became significant for poor people to have children and resulted in impoverishing them overtime they would self select to have fewer children – at the margin. If I remember correctly, in Denmark teen births are NOT funded by the government while almost all others are. Easy access to birth control and strong disincentives to have children will likely result in enough of a change to achieve this “goal” of reducing low IQ births.

JayMan,

A pleasure, sir, and thank you for the links.

JayMan,

Caught a bit of a conversation on Twitter, in which you stated that the most “traditional” states in Europe have the lowest fertility.

A moment’s Googling turned up this from the Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204800/British-birth-rate-soared-highest-Europe-thanks-increase-migrants.html

It claims that the country with the highest TFR is… Ireland. The next highest is… France. So it seems that it’s not really the case that the most traditional states have the lowest fertility, unless the Mail has its facts wrong, or you want to argue that Ireland and France are not traditional.

In fact, looking at the top ten, the only really incongruous presence is that of Scandinavian countries and the UK. But the white British TFR hasn’t moved at all in recent years and would still be resolutely mid table, absent the effect of immigration, or so the Mail’s journalist claims.

I don’t know much about trends in Scandinavia, but I would guess that their high rates also reflect the high fertility of their booming immigrant populations.

(Would it be possible to make a chart of Euro TFR, controlling for immigration?)

So my reading would be that the evidence is somewhat more mixed than you made out.

Oh, also – I know of an academic publisher that might release it…

Yeah! Who’s gonna write The Book?

Probably it should be a collaborative effort, actually. One person would lead to too much iconoclasm: it would be better to have samples across the HBD community. Unless that one person is a proponent of ‘vanilla’ HBD, like Sailer.

“We don’t need the world’s population to increase; we only need it to stop dumbing down.”

I agree. Quality over quantity. In South Asia sterilization of men in the highly educated bracket is increasing after they have already fathered the amount of children they can afford and desire. Amongst that demographic it would usually be 2 or 3.

But they are doing this out of an informed choice, not force.

“Staffan, you can offer low IQ people money for sterilization, but that would not get the other demographic interested in having children. They just don’t want to. There is no way to force them, nor should they be forced to have children.”

As a group, smart people aren’t having zero children, just too few, so sterilization will improve the overall intelligence. We don’t need the world’s population to increase; we only need it to stop dumbing down.

This is exactly the problem. Nobody will take the huge responsibility of raising a child only for the environment. If he doesn’t want to have a kid, he will say: “The environment does not need more humans”. He will use every excuse or rationalization not to have a kid: immigration will take care of it, there are too much people in the world, etc. Even without the blank slate, new excuses will be created.

You only have a kid for three reasons: you or your partner really want it, you do it because everybody else is doing it or it is your religious duty. This is why appeals to the common good are futile. As much as I like your blog, your crusade is dead on arrival, jayman

“Plus there’s the risk of the lady’s older eggs causing problems in advanced age.”

Old sperm is linked to autism in offspring.

Best for both mom and dad to be under 35.

I’m a global citizen. Everywhere I go I see women from traditional, patriarchal cultures, when given the chance to make decisions about it, always choose to have less children but raise them with more quality than their grandmothers who had more children but raised with with less quality. I’m talking “quality” here in terms of resources, education, healthcare, etc, not “quality of love”.

Women from poor regions with little or no access to quality heathcare will generally always opt to limit their offspring to just a few kids, if presented with the knowledge, resources and oppurtunity to do that. However they will not opt for no kids. Very, very few women and men would opt for that, no matter how poor. That is because they are culturally very family oriented.

People from Northern and Western European backgrounds however are not culturally family oriented. At least no where to the degree of everyone else. That is why you see in the US so many people opting out of having kids altogether.

As mentioned by someone else before, biology may inform culture. If that is the case, then there is something in the very biology of Northern and Western European “stock” that is essentially anti-family.

I have long sensed this in my travels around the world and dealings with people. I’m interested to see if science will ever verify my hypothesis that Northern and Western European stock folk just ain’t into family – from their core being.

From my perspective it would be “where sacred cows go to be worshipped” 😉

Staffan, you can offer low IQ people money for sterilization, but that would not get the other demographic interested in having children. They just don’t want to. There is no way to force them, nor should they be forced to have children.

Hi Yudi. What is this “Cathedral indoctrination” that you refer to? Papacy?

just generating motto options:) “where sacred cows go to be milked” “where sacred cows go to become delicious steak”

It took you a long time to arrive to this conclusion, but you did it. Congratulations. Now think up some operative conclusion, since “do yourself a favor” or “do it for the environment” advise does not work.

I did the exact opposite of most the guys in my cohort (as per usual) and got married and had kids right out of college despite having basically no career plan. Now I’m 35 and my kids are moving into the independent phase of their lives just as I am approaching my peak earning years. I’m looking forward to having an awesome time in my forties and fifties. That said, the whole: ‘she wants kids and he wants to wait’ discussion is exactly what happened with us, but I only wanted to wait a couple of years, not a decade. I score off the charts on openness to experience with a top 2% IQ and consider myself a libertarian socialist (but not anarchist), about -7, -7 on the compass.

Seriously though, who wants an old man as a father? Plus there’s the risk of the lady’s older eggs causing problems in advanced age. If we were smart we’d be having programs where finishing Univ with a 3.0 or better resulted in child bearing incentives that expire after five years… I can hear the career women screaming now so I know why that can’t happen. Staffan is likely right that one and done or other disincentives at the bottom is likely the only workable solution but even that is probably politically impossible. It would be nice if a private endowment took up the cause but I just don’t see it happening given the prevalence of blank slate thinking in the elite circles these days. It’s the story of modern civilization though: treat the symptoms not the disease.

I’ve noticed too that the blank slate idea is ubiquitous, especially among more intelligent people. Just an anecdotal observation. They really believe mass immigration will make up for it. It is impossible to reason with them.

Of the non-blank slatists who don’t want to have kids, I’ve often seen the idea that we should ban abortion–again, let someone else take up the slack.

I’m not impressed with either idea. I did my bit (2 kids) and 3 grandkids so far. It really does change your lifestyle, not that I regret it at all.

Managed to find this report which looks at age of first time fathers in the Netherlands, but also compares with some other European countries:

One in six first-time fathers over 40

“The number of fathers over the age of 40 at childbirth is growing. One in six had passed the age of 40 last year. In recent years, the average age of first-time fathers was 32.4 years. First-time mothers are on average 3 years younger. Dutch parents are generally a bit older than parents in other European countries.”

http://www.cbs.nl/en-GB/menu/themas/bevolking/publicaties/artikelen/archief/2011/2011-3478-wm.htm

Here in the UK, among the native British population the underclass has a much higher fertility rate, and starts reproduction at a much earlier age than the educated middle class, for several (fairly obvious) reasons.
Young girls with low levels of educational attainment and from unstable family backgrounds tend to see motherhood as their primary goal in life. They are presented with very few obstacles to becoming a mother early, and very few negative consequences for doing so. They will qualify for a range of welfare benefits, including free housing. They can avoid having to go out to work, they can abandon their education, they don’t need to be in a stable relationship or marriage, and they are doing something which they love and have always wanted to do. Once they are in this situation, they can have a boyfriend come over to stay with them on certain nights of the week as and when it suits either party, but not on a permanent basis so as not to risk losing their single mother benefits. With so much time on their hands, and unemployed boyfriends coming round to visit during the day or staying overnight, it is only a matter of time before their second, third, or eventually even fourth child is born.
Contrast with educated middle class couples, who generally prefer to be in a stable, long-term relationship or marriage, both parties working full-time in well paid jobs, plenty of educational credentials, money in the bank, bought their own home, etc. before starting a family.
It’s easy to see why there is such a difference in the fertility rate and age at first child between the two different social classes.
I am 34 and recently got married, and don’t yet have any children. From the high school I attended, which selected on academic ability, barely one third of the men who were in my academic year have become fathers to date. There was one outlier who became a dad at 23, but everyone else was 29 or over and married.
However among people I know from lower down the social scale, the majority of their peers have now become parents by their mid thirties, and several already have children in their teens.
I think continental western European countries generally don’t have this kind of disparity among their native populations as seen in Britain, with most of them following the later parenthood route of the educated middle classes (eg Norway). My perception is that it is more immigrants in continental western European countries who become parents at younger ages and have larger families.

Also, many of these liberals are still blank slatists who believe that it doesn’t make any difference if they leave it to others to have children in their place. Some even think immigration is the solution. I think it would be easier to offer low-IQ people money for sterilization.

Like the poster above, I think issues of social power are not coming into this analysis enough. Why does everyone have to be educated these days? To please their employers. Why do women go to college? Because female-dominated jobs that don’t require a college degree are very low-paying (nannies, etc.). And yes, the debt burden that college graduates labor under is crushing, and not conducive to risk-taking of any kind.

Furthermore, general economic and labor-market trends are terrible and don’t seem to be improving for most people. Many college graduates are stuck in menial labor and can hardly pay their debts as it is. It doesn’t take a genius to see that all of these things will put severe downward pressure on the fertility of high-IQ, highly conscientious people (but not that of low-IQ/unconscientious people, who have much more of a “what, happens, happens” outlook).

The elites really have us by the balls. Not only have they successfully pushed multiculturalism and mass immigration on us, their financial polices and the inequality they have created are crushing the fertility of high-IQ people. Also, as a result of those policies, vastly more people are going to college and being exposed to Cathedral indoctrination with little to show for it. And there is no end in sight. I wonder if you could address this social power aspect of the problem in your “HBD and Society” series? It’s certainly one thing that a broad awareness of HBD might change.

“You certainly can.”

No you certainly cannot

What methods were they using to “measure intelligence”?
What was the definition of “intelligence” that they used as a priori?
What other lifestyle factors were controlled for, if any?

But Chris, my friend, that is part of the point. White people of Northern and Western European descent (as well as Northeastern) have thin, translucent skin that does not weather well in weather. That is why their skin shows the ravages of time (even a short time) more.

There are some exceptions.

“But indeed, you’re correct, since these are both Anglo populations, we can’t quite generalize to the rest of the world, yet.”

You can’t generalize to the rest of the world AT ALL.

And you can’t even generalize to the rest of the Anglo population – at all.

There are so many other factors to be controlled for.

That’s why “studies” like this are junk pop science.

Pure fluff.

@Hindu Bio Diversity – “No, their BODIES look hot, NOT their faces.
I can’t count the number of times I have seen a white person from the back and assumed him or her to be in their 20s and then they turn around and BAM! A wrinkly, leathery face. And guess what? Many of them WERE in fact in their 20s.”

But do you live in a sunny location? Maybe your observations apply to twenty-something white people in somewhere like California. Just because you see young white people with leathery skin in your part of the world, doesn’t mean it is true of young white people around the world. I live in the UK, and I rarely see young white people with ‘leathery’ skin as we have insufficient hours of bright sunlight here. Young Brits who have lived and worked in Spanish holiday resorts for a number of years may end up like this however. The main issues which lead to premature aging among young white Brits are smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, drug use, poor diet, and stress. I do see a lot of younger smokers with ‘crows-feet’ wrinkling around their eyes, etc.

I hope you write about middle eastern iq.

“How is it junk science?

Look, merely reporting a finding you find unbelievable doesn’t make something “junk science.â€� You need to point out the flaws in their methodology.”

Seriously bro? Regarding the “Drinking More Makes You Smarter” – Where’s the “science” in the following;

“Go ahead, order that second beer: You deserve it because you’re so smart. According to the greatest study in the history of science (we’re only slightly exaggerating), smarter people tend to drink “more frequently and in greater quantities” than their duller, drier peers. In two studies conducted in the United States and United Kingdom, children’s intelligence was measured and categorized in five groups ranging from “very dull” to “very bright.” When the study participants were assessed later in life (the Brits checked in from their 20s to their 40s) the “brighter” kids were the ones who emptied more glasses more often. Why? No one is exactly sure yet. Anybody want to drink on it?”

1. How did they measure the intelligence?
2. An extremely small group of kids in a mere 2 countries out of hundreds of countries on this planet, whom they determined somehow were “brighter” (we don’t know how they determined that or what they mean by “dull” and “bright”) end up drinking more in adulthood and thus a universal claim of “smarter people drink more” is concluded?

Are you kidding me?

If that’s what you consider “hard science” then I question YOUR intelligence.

And you can’t be serious pointing me to that Sailer blog about …. high school!

There is no science behind that and they are talking about Americans. You really think the rest of the world is as hung up on high school social life well into their old like *some* Americans might be?

This is what I mean. That kind of thing doesn’t qualify as “science”. Hell not even “junk science”.

A few Americans who have never moved passed their teen years psychologically talked to a few other Americans who also haven’t.

Whoop Di Do!

And about never moving beyond boyhood, watch this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vmJLIscyUE

Here’s more junk “science”

http://m.now.msn.com/smarter-people-drink-more-study-says

These “studies” are nonsense.

Jayman, their data sample is small. The conclusions were speculative.

Although this is “yahoo”, you can read this;

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/health/love-sex/article/-/17582566/do-absent-dads-make-for-promiscuous-daughters/