When we compare Republican to Democratic-leaning counties in Figure 3 we find some · evidence that relative Democratic fertility falls, with an average quarterly effect of 0.087 · births per 1,000 women (0.6% of the 1999 average birth rate).

The paper’s authors find that this difference between Republican versus Democratic babies conceived in the first two years of the Trump presidency amounts to between 1 and 2% of the national birth rate.

Finally, Patrick T. Brown noted in an earlier IFS blog post that Republican counties do not significantly differ from Democratic counties in the proportion of babies born to married parents, contrary to years past. So, while Republican counties have higher fertility rates, these babies are not necessarily being born into more stable families. Nonetheless, the growing fertility divide has important political implications. Republicans live in areas where families are larger, and where more voters would directly benefit from policies like the Child Tax Credit.

The birth gap between the states that voted Republican and Democratic in the past presidential election has fallen from about 475,000 births in 2015 to approximately 294,000 births in 2023.

October 31, 2024 - The birth gap between the states that voted Republican and Democratic in the past presidential election has fallen from about 475,000 births in 2015 to approximately 294,000 births in 2023.

2 weeks ago - In each survey, Gallup asks U.S. adults whether they identify politically as a Republican, a Democrat or an independent. The recent increase in independent identification is partly attributable to younger generations of Americans (millennials and Generation X) continuing to identify as independents at relatively high rates as they have gotten older.

The use of state controls (and some robustness tests I ran in large states with many counties) suggests this effect isn’t driven by unique features of states: within Red states or Blue states, and controlling for county racial and ethnic characteristics and population densities, Republican counties have higher birth rates. This is particularly astonishing given that Democrats perform very well in counties with many Hispanic and black voters, who have higher birth rates than non-Hispanic white Americans (and indeed, the more non-Hispanic whites in a county, the lower its birth rate in my models).

2 weeks ago - This month, the conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank released a comprehensive package of ideas, most based on support for traditional families, aimed at stabilizing boosting birthrates. ... "The family is the foundation of every healthy society, and, tragically, the American family is on the brink," said Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts in a statement. "We are dangerously close to being unable to reverse the decline. Our country will not survive if families continue to crumble at this rate."

May 25, 2022 - The use of state controls (and some robustness tests I ran in large states with many counties) suggests this effect isn’t driven by unique features of states: within Red states or Blue states, and controlling for county racial and ethnic characteristics and population densities, Republican counties have higher birth rates. This is particularly astonishing given that Democrats perform very well in counties with many Hispanic and black voters, who have higher birth rates than non-Hispanic white Americans (and indeed, the more non-Hispanic whites in a county, the lower its birth rate in my models).

July 27, 2024 - From the article: A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family has found that political identity is increasingly influencing the number of children young adults desire to have. Spanning three decades, the research found that young Republicans consistently expressed a stronger desire for larger families compared to their Democratic counterparts, with this gap widening over time.

December 19, 2025 - The overall financial cost of things is finally improving, supply chains are finally starting to get a little bit back on track, and jobs and stuff like that. Colin: Changing. I also thought about polarizing just because, I mean, if you look at the way people vote or the way the House makes decisions, it is all just becoming very split down the middle. D.C.: Improving, partly because of tax incentives. Whenever you see the new tax incentives for employees, that’s going to bring more money into their pocket. Also, lowering the corporate tax rate is going to allow people to invest more money back into capital and assets, which in turn will do a snowball effect for more jobs.

3 weeks ago - Micah Beckwith, a Republican. Nick says he disagrees sharply with how his brother is tackling the immigration issue. “I disagree with basically every single issue that my brother works on politically, the redistricting stuff, the immigration stuff, the education stuff. We disagree on 95% of political issues,” he told CNN. They’ve been like that since they were kids, with Nick branding himself as “the Democrat” in a middle school essay.

July 8, 2022 - “The gap is actually 41 percent.” Data on the U.S. birth rate from the General Social Survey confirms this trend — a random sample of 100 conservative adults will raise 208 children, while 100 liberal adults will raise a mere 147 kids.

June 21, 2024 - Many of the prominent demographic differences that have defined the two parties’ voting coalitions in recent years persisted in the 2022 elections. Democratic voters were once again, on average, younger, more racially and ethnically diverse, and more likely to possess college degrees than Republican voters.

The top 20% of counties that voted for Harris had a TFR of 1.37. State-level data reveals a similar relationship between partisanship and fertility. Democratic states have much lower fertility rates than Republican states.

November 11, 2025 - In 2023, 43% of U.S. adults identified as independents, tying the record high from 2014. Meanwhile, Democratic identification fell to a new low of 27%.

December 19, 2024 - I believe women’s education is a high predictor of tfr, and democrats are significantly more educated right now. ... That used to be the case, but it has changed now. American women with graduate degrees have more children than women with a high school diploma or less. Groups that used to have lots of children (poor people and those with less education) have seen their birth rates collapse.

Relative to Democratic counties, this amounts to roughly 23,000 · more births to mothers in Republican counties in the year following the election.

November 22, 2024 - “Republican states (those that Trump won in 2020) generally have markedly higher fertility rates than Democratic ones (those that Biden won), suggesting that more men and women feel confident about starting and raising families in red states ...

October 27, 2025 - The 20 U.S. counties with the largest margins for Trump had an average total fertility rate of 1.76; the 20 counties with the highest margin for Harris had a TFR of 1.37 in 2024. Yenor and Stone infer, “Democrats increasingly seem to be the ...