[abeppu]

I didn't read the full paper only the abstract, but bc the political spectrum is correlated with education level or urban vs rural or multiple other factors that deeply impact what it is like to have kids. Of urban college educated professionals, do the conservatives still have more kids than the progressives? Or does the opportunity cost on careers plus the high cost of childcare plus the cost of living space impact conservatives and progressives alike? And among rural people without a college degree, do progressives still have fewer kids than their conservative neighbors?

When a bunch of demographic factors are all not just correlated but are linked to challenges in raising kids, it seems like elevating a single one of those factors is selective framing

[mike_hearn]

Yes they do. Just grep the paper for the word "control" and you can quickly find the answers to these questions. This isn't a new finding and they've controlled for all the obvious factors.

[abeppu]

I did grep through the paper, and ... no not really.

"Urban" and "rural" never appear. Among uses of "control", for their own work they have controlled for sex and race. Their Table 2 and Figure 2 are the same data displayed different ways and from the same analysis. In their mentions of other work they note related work on Europe that controlled for religiosity, education and income, and socioeconomic and attitudinal factors.

Their table 1 actually shows that the p-value for religious attendance, education, two race variables , and birth year, were all tied with the politics variable, and showed that education, and both race variables had larger-magnitude estimates and z-values.

After reading some of the paper, while I still think there's a relationship between political beliefs and number of kids, I don't see that their methods are convincing that this is more important than other such correlations.

[skissane]

> Of urban college educated professionals, do the conservatives still have more kids than the progressives?

Look at Amy Coney Barrett - Supreme Court justice, before that a constitutional law professor then federal appeals court judge, five biological children plus two adopted, and an ultraconservative Roman Catholic.

I think you’ll find the “women with successful professional careers and >=5 kids” demographic has a strong conservative skew.