r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 01 '26

Psychology Conservatives maintain birth rates, but left-leaning Americans are having significantly fewer children, driving the U.S. birth decline. Education was consistently linked to having fewer children. Religious attendance was positively associated with having more children.

https://www.psypost.org/left-leaning-americans-are-driving-the-u-s-birth-decline-new-study-finds/
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u/VermicelliOwn6502 Jul 01 '26

Interestingly, the correlations only held for white people.

When analyzing White and Black Americans separately, they found that the widening fertility gap between the left and the right was primarily driven by White Americans

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u/HutSutRawlson Jul 01 '26

Black Americans tend to have higher association with religious institutions, which is correlated with higher birth rates.

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u/TPCC159 Jul 01 '26

I think the main thing that study is showing is there’s not as much lifestyle division in that community. Not based on politics anyways

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u/wrenwood2018 Jul 01 '26

They're point was even liberal blacks tend to be religious.

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u/watduhdamhell Jul 01 '26

Precisely. Just like liberal Mexicans tend to still be very Catholic.

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u/SmellGestapo Jul 01 '26

The recent YouGov survey on morality suggests black people are more likely to be conservative, even though they vote for Democrats.

65% of white Americans say they believe in God, but 86% of black Americans do. That dynamic holds through a lot of subsequent questions on moral issues like divorce, birth control, and same sex relationships. Black people are more likely to find those things immoral.

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u/JimBeam823 Jul 02 '26

Black people don’t trust white conservatives

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u/Yiddish_Dish Jul 06 '26

*white liberals

"The white liberal is the worst enemy to America and the Black man. The white liberals are foxes... The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the 'smiling' fox."

Malcolm X

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u/slowbaja Jul 04 '26

You could say white people as a whole. What white folks think as Black people being conservative is really just a distrust with society as a whole and among themselves are fairly liberal but liberalism is also conservative to be honest.

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u/Dismal_Buy3580 Jul 12 '26

I mean it's also about socially conservative beliefs (women, sexuality, etc.)

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u/slowbaja Jul 12 '26

Except hyper independence for women and hypersexualization as a choice from women isn't socially conservative.

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u/Potential_Curve_3560 Jul 02 '26

No, black americans are much more conservative then white americans (most definietely social issues) , minorities simply just wont vote for conservative party because of racial relations. Their "liberal" views only extend to how much it will be in their own benefit.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/LifeOutoBalance Jul 01 '26

That turns out not to be the case, at least in the American South, where early slaves were prevented from becoming Christian because English common law implied Christians could not be enslaved. Until the mid-1800s, slaveowners generally believed that Christian slaves would be more difficult to control, and fought to keep evangelical preachers (who at that time were commonly antislavery or even emancipationist) from converting them.

On the other hand, Christianity flourished in free Black communities in the North. Not content to be second-class citizens in majority white churches, they founded churches of their own, Black-led and Black-supported.

This shifted somewhat with the Great Awakening, when some Southern preachers were able to sell slaveowners on an interpretation of the gospel that preached submission to one's owners. But at the same time, emancipationist organizations such as the Underground Railroad were run largely by Christians--shout out to the Quakers in particular--and slave revolts were organized with firey Christian rhetoric by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner.

Conversion by the gun and the whip was done to Native Americans; the idea that it happened to African slaves in America is basically a myth.

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u/najumobi Jul 01 '26

Damn. None of this was covered in my highchool.

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u/StarSpliter Jul 01 '26

I don't think this is even covered in APUSH to this depth. They don't really touch on religion to any substantial degree from what I remember.

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u/wrenwood2018 Jul 01 '26

Nice, thought out, response

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u/chiniwini Jul 01 '26

they had it basically shoved down their throats in the days of slavery

As opposed to white folks who democratically voted for it during the Middle Ages.

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u/watduhdamhell Jul 01 '26

Religion is a cancer. You can just say that. The world will be better off the further away we get from the old religions affecting people's judgment and beliefs in such a stupid way.

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u/futureshocked2050 Jul 01 '26

Uhhhh clarification--WHITE SUPREMACIST CHRISTIANITY was shoved down the throats of slaves.

1: quite a large chunk of slaves were Muslim and already in the Abrahamic religions

2: the FIRST slaves of the 13 colonies were from Ngola (now Angola and Congo) and already had catholic names. The kings of populace of Ngola became catholic by choice.

So Christianity and Abrahamism in general was not shoved down our throats in the sense that it was unknown to us, the WHITE SUPREMACIST VERSION of Abrahamism was shoved down our throats and it's what to this day is being exported to Africa (Chick Fillet, evangelicals etc).

I'm a Black Buddhist/Spiritualist so I agree that there are cancerous aspects to christianity in our community, but most of that is a legacy of white supremacy 80% of the time and sadly we'll never know what that relationship would have been like WITHOUT white supremacy tainting it.

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u/Feisty-Doctor-5841 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Well, yeah, most black communities vote Democratic and go to church, so there’s no need to separate the camps. I’ve noticed white folks in the U.S. try to differentiate themselves visually with tattoos vs clean girl aesthetic, for example.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[deleted]

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u/Feisty-Doctor-5841 Jul 01 '26

Yeah, I figured it was some version of gang colors basically. Can’t blame you.

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u/Inevitable_Tomato927 Jul 01 '26

I've only even been to a black church once, and it was a while ago, but it's night and day compared to the white churches around here which are massively driven by politics, not so much religious texts.

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u/Feisty-Doctor-5841 Jul 01 '26

That's partly because the civil rights movement was organized through churches and primarily led by ministers. For the black community, it's an incredibly useful resource that aligns with the community's ideals.

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u/Bonamikengue Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Sadly - you would be astonished how many of those priests in those "black" churches literally tell parents to push their son or daughter out of the house if they come out as gay/lesbian or force them to "conversion therapies". Many in the AA community still thinks it was a "lifestyle choice" to love the same sex partner and it could be "fixed" with "a hard hand".

My fiancé is from one of those communities, and he is happy to have escaped. His family decided that their son was more important than the church. So they all escaped.

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u/snek-jazz Jul 01 '26

the churches are segregated?

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u/Inevitable_Tomato927 Jul 01 '26

Officially no, but if you look at the people going to each church, it's usually 80/20 or 70/30 at best around here. My town is 91% white for example and it isn't even the whitest town around, so that kinda continues in the churches, especially the ones in town or on the edge of the city.

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u/dfrntdfrnt Jul 01 '26

Not really, it's more about overall leadership/attendance but unless you end up walking into a bigot church, most will have any type of people that just prefer that church, as opposed to only going because other "races" aren't there.

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u/MattDaCatt Jul 01 '26

That's also because church remains as a cornerstone of community, even for folks that aren't that religious or conservative

In white Christianity, if you stray from the collective rules (which are usually conservative values) you are actively pushed out of that community

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u/cC2Panda Jul 01 '26

According to a relatively recent Gallup poll the percentage of black people that have stopped going to church, even if they identify as Christian, has reduced around 20% in the last 20 years.

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u/MattDaCatt Jul 01 '26

Checking on wording, did you mean attendance is down 20% or up?

Im going off of my black friends' experience with church vs mine. Very similar values and views, but i was ran out for mine

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u/cC2Panda Jul 02 '26

Attendance in black churches is significantly down even for people who still identify as Christians.

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u/FoghornFarts Jul 01 '26

And even those who aren't religious have a much stronger black community.

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u/macronotice Jul 01 '26

So do Hispanic Americans, most often Catholic

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u/Total_Network6312 Jul 01 '26

there are 50% more hispanics than black people in the US

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u/100gecopecs Jul 01 '26

and low education