Dear Colleague:
Culture and politics should continue to trend right, for two related, and
mutually reinforcing, reasons: Pro-life and pro-family people are the ones
having children. And the more children they have, the more likely they
are to put family and life concerns foremost. It's a virtuous circle.
Steven W. Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
30 December 2004
Vol. 6 / No. 42
Unlike Europe's, U.S. Population Continues to Grow--And in the Right
Places
By Joseph A. D'Agostino
The U.S. Census Bureau's latest population figures released this month
show that the U.S. population is growing at a 1% annual rate. The nation
added 2.9 million people between July 1, 2003 and July 1, 2004, with about
1.2 million of that coming from immigration, according to the bureau.
(However, the bureau may underestimate illegal immigrants.) This growth
was not spread evenly across the country, but was concentrated in the more
pro-life, family-oriented "red states." America's relatively robust
growth stands in sharp contrast to the demographic disaster facing Europe
and Japan, both of which are in the opening stages of a major population
dieback.
The 47 nations of Europe (including Russia) are already losing people as I
write. The United Nations Population Division projects that between 2005
and 2050, the continent will lose 93 million people, imploding from 725
million to 632 million. Even Western Europe, despite a continuing influx
of childbearing immigrants, will see a significant decline in numbers.
Europe's fertility rate is an anemic 1.3 children per woman, far below the
2.1 needed to maintain the population at current levels. Japan,
historically antagonistic to immigrants, will lose 18 million people,
shrinking from 128 million to 110 million people. America's fertility
rate, on the other hand, is just above 2.1, and American women are having
more, not fewer, children today than they did 15 years ago.
What does the fecundity of (at least relatively) cradle-loving Americans,
and the infecundity of our childless European cousins, bode for the
future? Internationally, it means that "old Europe" will continue to
decline in power and influence relative to a younger and more dynamic
United States. Domestically, it means that pro-life and pro-family forces
within America will continue to gain strength. Politically, this trend
began in earnest in 1994, when Republicans running on a conservative
platform took control of both houses of Congress. This slow political
takeover has spread to governorships, state legislatures, and even to the
White House, where President Bush overcame a mediocre economy and a shaky
war effort to win re-election with the support of burgeoning pro-family
forces. Some day soon, this revenge of the cradle on the part of
conservative-loving Americans may reach the judiciary.
Massachusetts, the liberal bastion par excellence, as the French say, was
the only state to actually lose people between July 1, 2003 and July 1,
2004. The equally lefty District of Columbia also lost people. Topping
the population growth charts were, in descending order: Nevada, Arizona,
Florida, Idaho, Georgia, Texas, Utah, Delaware, North Carolina, and New
Mexico. Each and every one of these states went for Bush this year with
the exception of Delaware, and all except Delaware and New Mexico are
solidly red and reliably pro-life. Even Sen. Harry Reid (D.-Nev.), the
new leader of the rabidly pro-abortion Senate Democrats, usually votes
pro-life. These ten states accounted for 49% of the country's population
growth. The one-time bellwether state of California has tilted from red
to blue in recent years. Massive immigration has been offset enough by a
middle-class flight to more family-friendly jurisdictions to kick the
Golden State's growth rate out of the top ten.
The solid South, now reliably red and strongly pro-life, had the largest
increase in population among America's regions (1.5 million); the mostly
red and pro-life West had the fastest growth rate (1.5%), although the
South was close behind with 1.4%. The mostly blue and anti-life regions
of the Northeast (0.3%) and Midwest (0.5%) didn't fare as well. In these
stark regional disparities one can discern America's political future.
Ethnic voting patterns are important here, too. As Steve Sailer pointed
out in the Dec. 20, 2004 American Conservative, pro-life Bush carried the
19 states with the highest white fertility rates and 25 of the top 26.
Abortion-on-demand Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest white fertility
rates. The party that gets the lion's share of the votes of 70% of the
population is well on its way to victory.
Unlike the factors made fashionable by the media-the gender gap or
out-sourcing, for example-the "baby gap" is a far better predictor of how
a state will vote. "Indeed, voters are picking their parties based on
differing approaches to the most fundamentally important human activity:
having babies," wrote Sailer. "The white people in Republican-voting
regions consistently have more children than the white people in
Democratic-voting regions. The more kids whites have, the more pro-Bush
they get." Higher marriage rates and more time spent married correlates
even more strongly with Republicanism, Sailer later found. "When years
married is teamed with fertility in a two-factor multiple regression
model, the correlation becomes stratospheric," he wrote on Vdare.com.
The self-evident truth: The future belongs to those peoples and countries
that are living out the pro-life, pro-family message. All the rest are
history.
So consider making "be fruitful and multiply" your New Year's resolution
for 2005.
Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.
PRI
P.O. Box 1559
Front Royal, VA 22630
USA
Phone: (540) 622-5240 Fax: (540) 622-2728
Email: jad@pop.org
Media Contact: Joseph A. D'Agostino
(540) 622-5240, ext. 204
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