The baby bust and the gender gap

Young women in rich countries are becoming more and more liberal and show less and less interest in children

So much for the maternal instinct.

Buried in a national poll from late 2023 is a stunning finding: American women are much less worried about falling fertility rates than men. Fewer than one in three women said they were concerned about the trend, compared to 43 percent of men.

The data, from the respected American Family Survey, an annual study of 3,000 Americans, adds to a picture emerging globally of two linked trends that may be accelerating the baby bust.

In the last decade, young women in rich countries have moved sharply to the left. Young men have not. In some countries they have become much more conservative. The result is a gap in political and cultural attitudes between the sexes that has become a chasm.

The Financial Times captured the trend in a graphic that has received huge attention, with nearly 25 million views on X since last Friday:

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That gender-ideological difference comes on top of the fact that liberal political attitudes are linked to lower fertility rates, a trend that is also accelerating.

In a 2018 paper, researchers found in the 1970s, the most liberal people in the General Social Survey - a yearly survey of American attitude and behavior - had the most kids.

By the 2010-2014 surveys, the gap had not just closed but reversed. The most conservative people had nearly three children on average, the most liberal under two.

Similarly, last year’s American Family Survey showed a huge gap between Republicans and Democrats over whether “declining fertility is a negative sign for the nation.”

By a 55-15 margin, Republicans agreed. But Democrats were actually more likely to call lower birth rates a positive trend, by a 32-27 margin.

In other words, the move to the left by the young would likely signal lower birth rates even if both genders were going that way.

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(Baby needs a new pair of shoes! And I’ve got three of them. Help me out, for 20 cents a day…)

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But the problem now may be even more fundamental.

Women, not men, ultimately control the decision to have kids. If the current political polarization continues, more and more young women may not find any young men they find ideologically acceptable - for marriage or children.

Most marriages are between spouses with similar political ideologies. That trend is also increasing. In the United States, fewer than 4 percent of marriages now occur between Democrats and Republicans.

The convergence of the gender gap and baby bust is particularly obvious in South Korea, because the ideological gap between women and men has widened so steeply and quickly. In addition, Koreans have a strong taboo against out-of-wedlock births. Women essentially cannot have children if they do not marry.

Not coincidentally, South Korea now has by far the lowest birth rate of any major country. South Korean women are now predicted to have about 0.7 children on average, far below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to keep national populations steady.

Even more stunning, the South Korean birthrate shows no signs of bottoming. And many Korean women appear unconcerned. The Atlantic wrote last year about a South Korean women’s movement called the “four nos” - “no to dating, no to sex with men, no to marriage, and no to childbirth.” As one woman said, her friends “kind of hate men, and they are afraid of them.”

The trend clearly shook the article’s author, a single American woman who is having a child through in vitro fertilization. Near its end, she wrote: After talking with so many thoughtful and kind young people, I mostly felt sad that, a generation from now, there will be fewer like them in their country.

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But how to reverse this polarization and its consequences is unclear.

Governments can provide tax credits and other financial incentives to have kids. They can subsidize child care and encourage or require generous parental leave. But if, as in South Korea, women simply dislike men so much they don’t want to have marry them - much less raise families with them - it’s hard to imagine a government policy turning the tide.

What, if anything, can?

Your guess is as good as mine.