Are ‘red’ or ‘blue’ families stronger?

Conventional wisdom, AEI scholar Brad Wilcox says, pronounces “blue” families stronger than “red” families. The argument being that blue America’s emphasis on education, gender egalitarianism, and delayed parenthood better prepares its citizens to create stable families in the modern world (unlike red America with its outdated views). But that’s not quite an accurate assessment. Wilcox and Nicholas Zill recently showed that both the bluest and reddest states are most likely to have high levels of family stability. In a piece out July 1, though, Wilcox goes one step further and analyzes red and blue families at the county level. Here’s what he has to say [emphasis mine]:

[T]he state-level focus of this discussion misses the connection between family stability and political culture at the local level. After all, there are plenty of blue states with lots of red counties (think Pennsylvania), and vice versa (think Texas). Up until now, we have not known about the connection between local political culture and stable family life. As this research brief shows, it turns out, at the local level, red counties typically enjoy somewhat stronger families than do blue counties on at least three measures worth considering: marriage, nonmarital childbearing, and family stability.

Wilcox finds that red counties have a higher share of married population, lower levels of nonmarital childbearing, and their teenagers are more likely to be living with their biological parents. These factors matter because kids raised in a stable, two-parent family are more likely to get a good education and do well in the labor force, and are less likely to experience a teen pregnancy or incarceration. Economist Raj Chetty’s research also shows that “communities with more two-parent families are also more likely to foster high levels of economic mobility for poor children.”

What about the red-leaning South, though, where divorce is more common? Wilcox writes that doesn’t actually result in “higher levels of family instability in red America as a whole” because “nonmarital childbearing, not divorce, is now the biggest engine of family instability in the United States.”

He adds:

Here, red America’s stronger religious and normative support for marriage—manifested in higher rates of marriage and lower rates of nonmarital childbearing—means that the divorce disadvantage in red America is outweighed by the fact that children are more likely to be born to a married family in more conservative counties. The bottom line: the marriage advantage in red America helps explain why children in red counties are somewhat more likely to enjoy stable families than are children in blue counties.

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