Just over a week ago Ed wrote about a new study which found a significant birth rate gap between conservatives and progressives. Here’s a chart published by the Financial Times author who analyzed this.
NEW: Progressives have a birth rate problem
For all the talk of a general fall in births, the drop is overwhelmingly driven by people on the left having fewer kids.
By ceding the topic of family and children to the right, progressives risk ushering in a more conservative world. pic.twitter.com/FmpYEsGVio
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) August 29, 2025
He was quick to point to the irony of this situation as progressives holding back on children because they are concerned about the planet would ensure that most children were raised by conservatives who didn’t share those concerns. Over time that could move society as a whole to the right.
But: the consequence of this emerging ideological slant in birth rates is that each successive generation gets nudged rightwards, increasing the likelihood that conservative politicians (who want to constrain individual liberty and set back women’s progress) get elected.
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) August 29, 2025
But can we say for certain that the lower birth rates among progressives are being driven by ideology? Today NBC News published the results of a survey which seems to help explain why birth rates are higher among conservatives. The gist of this is that gender gap (men vote more conservative and women more progressive) isn’t limited to the political issues we might normally think about.
Gender divides within adults ages 18 to 29 show up in questions ranging from how Americans feel about President Donald Trump to their views on what constitutes success. Young men and women also feel very different about mental health, cultural issues and questions about gender and the workplace.
Among Gen Z overall, 64% disapprove of Trump’s job performance versus 36% who approve. But young men are more evenly split (53% disapprove, 47% approve) than young women (74% disapprove, 26% approve). The 21-point difference in Trump’s approval rating is unchanged from April.
Simply put, men are more likely to like Trump and women are more likely to oppose him. When you ask about more personal issues, i.e. what does it take to have a successful life, men and women appear to be in agreement.
To try to understand more about the gap between young men and women, respondents were also asked to select their top three choices that define success for them from a list of 13 phrases.
Despite their differences, Gen Z men and women both ranked the same three things as the most important to them in defining success: having a fulfilling job, having money to do the things they want to do and achieving financial independence.
However, if you scan down the list of possible answers, you do see a difference. Men placed being married and having children 7th and 8th on the list of what it takes to have a good life, while women placed these at 10th and 11th. But where you really see the difference is when you sort those response by party. Suddenly the differences are quite drastic.
Gen Z men who voted for Trump rate having children as the most important thing in their personal definition of success. Gen Z women who voted for Harris ranked having children as the second-least important thing in their personal definition of success.
Here’s what the list of responses looks like by ideology.
Fascinating new results on Gen Z from the @NBCNews Decision Desk poll — views on family and marriage https://t.co/21RccG5YYs pic.twitter.com/XHjsimBm8k
— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) September 8, 2025
For Trump voting men, having a family is key to success. For Harris voting women it’s insignificant. What is significant to those women (at #3) is “having emotional stability.” Harris voting men rank this at #4. By contrast Trump voting men put this at #12 and Trump voting women at #10.
I’d like to suggest that the reason Trump voters care less about having emotional stability is because many of them already have it. For progressives on the other hand, it’s definitely not a given.
This is not something I’m throwing out lightly. I’ve written a lot about studies which indicate teen girls are struggling with mental health issues but especially progressive teens. Progressive columnist Michelle Goldberg admitted back in 2023 that she initially saw this data as a chance to blame Trump for driving liberal teens crazy but realized after looking more closely that the data didn’t support that.
Last year, a study came out showing that left-leaning adolescents were experiencing a greater increase in depression than their more conservative peers. Indeed, while girls are more likely to be depressed than boys, the study, by a group of epidemiologists at Columbia, showed that liberal boys had higher rates of depression than conservative girls…
As I looked closer at the data, I saw that the inflection point for liberal adolescent depression wasn’t 2016, but around 2012. That was the year of the devastating Sandy Hook mass shooting, but it was not otherwise a time of liberal political despair. Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012. In 2013, the Supreme Court extended gay marriage rights. It was hard to draw a direct link between that period’s political events and teenage depression, which in 2012 started an increase that has continued, unabated, until today.
Matt Yglesias later suggested that there was something about progressive ideology which seemed to invite the kind of catastrophism that is often present for people struggling with depression.
I think the discussion around gender and the role of social media is an important one. But I also don’t believe that liberal boys are experiencing more depression than conservative girls because they are disproportionately hung up on Instagram-induced body image issues — I think there’s also something specific to politics going on.
Some of it might be selection effect, with progressive politics becoming a more congenial home for people who are miserable. But I think some of it is poor behavior by adult progressives, many of whom now valorize depressive affect as a sign of political commitment…
Life is complicated, and this is difficult. But for a very wide range of problems, part of helping people get out of their trap is teaching them not to catastrophize. People who are paralyzed by anxiety or depression or who are lashing out with rage aren’t usually totally untethered from reality. They are worried or sad or angry about real things. But instead of changing the things they can change and seeking the grace to accept the things they can’t, they’re dwelling unproductively as problems fester.
So what am I saying here? I’m saying that the data for how young (18-29) conservatives and progressives prioritize family and marriage matches up pretty well with the data that shows progressives are more likely to be depressed. Conservative men are the least likely to be depressed and prioritize marriage and children highest. Progressive women are the most likely to be depressed and prioritize marriage and children the lowest. And also, research shows progressive men more likely to be depressed than conservative women and in the survey above you see conservative women rank marriage and children higher than progressive men. Again, the connection seem to track.
There seems to be some outside evidence connecting depression to having fewer children. This study published in 2023 was based in Finland.
Both men and women with secondary care-treated depression have a lower likelihood of having children and have fewer children. Our findings suggest that depression may be one of the factors that contribute to the likelihood of having children, which should be addressed by policy makers.
And separately, a study out of Finland found a connection between “woke” beliefs and depression.
Lahtinen found a correlation between higher agreement with critical social justice attitudes and increased reports of anxiety and depression. Agreement with the statement “If white people have on average a higher income than black people, it is because of racism” exhibited the largest positive correlation with anxiety and depression, and the largest negative correlation with happiness.
However, these associations were more strongly correlated with participants’ political orientation than with critical social justice attitudes per se. Specifically, being on the political left was more predictive of lower mental well-being than high critical social justice scores alone.
So, again, it seems like progressivism, depression and having fewer children are all correlated together in some way. One way to put this is that progressives are more likely to be depressed and depressed people are less likely to have kids. By contrast, conservatism, better mental health and wanting a family also seem correlated. Given that these factors seem to be significantly impacting the life-choices of teens and young people, it probably ought to generate more discussion than it does.
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