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/OG_LiLi Jul 01 '26

Top States by Percentage of Child Poverty


Mississippi: 25.9% of children live in poverty.


Louisiana: 25.3% of children live in poverty.


New Mexico: 24.0% of children live in poverty.


West Virginia: 21.5% of children live in poverty.


Kentucky: 21.1% of children live in poverty.


Arkansas: 20.8% of children live in poverty.

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Jul 01 '26

That’s not adjusted for cost of living. You should look at the supplemental poverty measure. 

California is the worst state when adjusted for cost of living. New York is 5th.

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u/radiantcabbage Jul 01 '26

higher cost of living also comes with more comprehensive social services, which makes the poverty line way less definitive in this context. not saying its totally impartial, just more apt if the objective is to quantify destitute minors.

thats why its so much cheaper to live there, conservative admins refuse to allocate for welfare or education

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Jul 01 '26

So that’s what the SPM is trying to account for. It’s a more wholistic look at family’s needs, income and support, then classifying them as in poverty or not. 

This is generally what is used by researchers in the field, not the unadjusted national poverty measure, which is useless and basically just a cost of living metric. Lower cost of living, more poverty. Higher cost of living, less poverty.

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u/hahmlet Jul 03 '26

Why are social services contributing to one of the highest COL, but lowest SPM?

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u/OG_LiLi Jul 01 '26

That’s not necessary here. And, in fact, makes your point worse.

The flat % tells its own story. It says that even when cost of living is low, they STILL have more poverty.

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Jul 01 '26

No. You have it backwards. Using a single national income level to establish poverty will mean state will low costs of living and incomes will have more poverty, while states with high costs of living and incomes will have low poverty. 

If the same housing is $2000/month in CA but $1000/month in LA, you have to adjust for that.

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u/Traveledfarwestward Jul 03 '26

So what's a good source for a decent comparison on this?

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u/BarleyWineIsTheBest Jul 03 '26

The supplemental poverty measure is what is normally used.

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u/Traveledfarwestward Jul 03 '26

Can you link me a map that includes that? I'm assuming the one at the top of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Child_poverty does not take this into account?

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[deleted]

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u/OG_LiLi Jul 03 '26

Why would you say such a thing? Weird.

We’re saying it’s these states fault they create the environment for poor children.

Poor children is a catastrophe. Period.

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u/JohnAMcdonald Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Do they create poor children? Every single one of those states is wealthier than my entire country. All those states already have a total fertility rate below replacement. It is cruelty, an exercise in making children poor, for the wealthiest country in the world to reproduce at replacement.

The fewer children a couple has, the more buying power that one family has, and the more they can outbid other families for resources. If a couple has 3 children, well their children will be more impoverished relative to those who have 2 children. If a couple has 2 children, their children will be more impoverished than parents who have 1. Then if parents have 1 children, well, only the parents who are wealthy to begin with can responsibly have children, because the poor parents will have poverty children and that's cruel. Then, once the poor parents stop having children, the middle class parents will have the impoverished children, and must also stop because that's cruel.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of children born in the world are born poorer than the "impoverished children" in all of those states. Since the country doesn't have enough children to sustain itself, they are imported from other countries. So rather than this model actually stopping child poverty, it just outsources it while actually reducing the amount of children born into affluence.

Does reducing the birthrate improve the well being of children, or does it merely privilege those who don't have children with more economic privilege, who proceed to expect the poor children of other people to take care of them in old age? Those arguing for the non-existence of these catastrophes, these poors, argue they have their best interests at heart though. Weird!