They make up the largest and most loyal constituency within the Republican party, but social conservatives get little respect from party leaders, nominees, or elected officials. Not only have Republican elites rarely engaged the moral, cultural, and family issues dear to their base, but the popularity of Barack Obama and the gravity of the economic crisis have spooked them further. From ex-governors Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney to congressional leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, most national GOP leaders seem more convinced than ever that social issues should remain on the back burner as the party seeks to rebuild for the future.
That calculus, however, may be a big mistake. As former Wall Street strategist and Forbes columnist David P. Goldman argues in the May issue of First Things, American demographic decline not only predates the present economic meltdown but also is its major underlying cause.
As he quantifies his case, the failure of the Baby Boom generation to uphold marriage as the social ideal, to increase the number of wealth-generating households made up of married parents and their children, and to bear a sufficient number of children to maintain a robust economy is root and branch of what he calls “the most democratic of economic crises.” Goldman sees little hope for a recovery coming about through economic policy or financial engineering: “Unless we restore the traditional family to a central position in American life, we cannot expect to return to the kind of wealth accumulation that characterized the 1980s and 1990s.”
Goldman cites a revealing anomaly: The number of American two-parent families with children under 18 (about 25 million) — the key demographic for prosperity and the accumulation of wealth — has remained flat since the late 1960s, even though the country’s population has increased by 50 percent. Meanwhile, the stock of U.S. housing units suitable for such families — houses with at least three bedrooms — has doubled since 1973. This imbalance was instrumental in the collapse of real-estate values.
Perhaps Goldman’s most perceptive observation is that the economic growth and GOP electoral successes that President Reagan spearheaded did not usher in the golden age that conservatives claim. For sure, the boom of the last generation looked good on paper — at least before the meltdown of 2008. But when it is compared to the achievements of the 1950s and 1960s, the differences are striking. In the earlier boom, household income largely kept pace with GDP growth, and it did so with one wage earner in most households. According to Census Bureau data, the median income of a married-couple family increased in inflation-adjusted terms by 93 percent between 1950 and 1970, while GDP increased by 103 percent. By contrast, between 1980 and 2005, while the GDP increased by 116 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, the median income of married-couple families chugged along at a much slower pace, increasing by 40 percent. Ironically, the slower growth of family income in the later period occurred as the proportion of married mothers in the full-time workforce increased to almost 50 percent.
Although Goldman doesn’t reference the earlier boom, he would likely agree that the Fabulous Fifties had a lot to do with demographics. Not only did the marriage rate rise and the divorce rate decline, but the average age of first marriage fell to historic lows: 22 for men and 20 for women. Nearly 95 percent of all adults coming of age during the 1950s tied the knot. Consequently, the number of married-couple households grew by 30 percent between 1950 and 1970, and the fertility rate nearly doubled. American families were vibrant and strong, which helped hold the welfare state in check.
The demography of the past 30 years tells a different story. Marriage rates have reached new lows (only 57 percent of men and 54 percent of women were currently married as of 2007), while alternative living arrangements have proliferated. Households without the benefits of marriage or children nearly tripled, from 12 million in 1970 to 35 million in 2002. The percentage of births to unwed mothers, another indicator of diminishing returns, hit a record 40 percent in 2007 (compared to less than 5 percent throughout most of the 1950s).
Furthermore, to accommodate and enable the social and economic distortions of that demographic upheaval, Congress dramatically expanded the welfare state and social services of all kinds. Given that today’s boomers will have — relative to their parents — dramatically fewer family resources to help them navigate old age, pressures for even more welfare schemes are sure to intensify.
What this means for the elections of 2010 and 2012 should be clear. The present crop of GOP leaders will need to do what they have never done and move social issues front and center. The challenge involves more than simply resisting elite efforts to deconstruct matrimony and keep the abortion industry alive and kicking. It means fully recognizing the interplay between the economic and social conservatism that the party claims to represent, and holding up what Goldman terms “impoverished demography” as the key domestic concern of the 21st century.
A demographic policy agenda would mean boldly calling for the repeal of numerous tax provisions, social programs, and court decisions that, over the last 40 years, have unraveled what George Gilder terms the sexual constitution of society, and that obstruct the creation of the wealth that really matters. In their place, the party should offer tax reforms that fully recognize the economic value of married couples who are bearing and rearing the next generation. Much of this can be achieved, as suggested in my NRO post on the 1948 Revenue Act, by allowing “income splitting” for all married filers, raising the personal and dependent exemptions, and raising the per-child tax credit while eliminating the income “phase-out” that today precludes many taxpayers from fully realizing the benefit of the credit.
Among the ideas that Goldman suggests is raising Social Security and Medicare tax rates while giving a sizable exemption for dependents — thus in effect raising payroll tax rates on the childless. This would be a welcome alternative to the GOP’s current fixation on “private accounts.” My colleague Allan Carlson has also called for forgiving a portion of student loans for young married parents based upon the number of children they are bringing up.
Recognizing that tax cuts alone cannot win elections, the party would find encouragement for a demographic agenda from Teddy Roosevelt, who expressed concerns about demographic decline in his day. Like no chief executive since, the 26th president highlighted the links between the child-rich family and the welfare of the nation. Lamenting the self-indulgence of his own generation, the father of six children reminded Americans that “no other success in life” matches the success of husbands and wives who do their duty — who “bring into the world, and rear as they should be reared, children sufficiently numerous” to keep the nation “going forward.”
The GOP might very well find that bold leadership on demographic issues will resonate with an anxious middle class after Obama’s charm has worn thin and his policies have proven hollow. Most important, a younger generation of voters — fearful about what kind of country their boomer parents are leaving them — just might connect with the party that adopts, as Goldman puts it, “The message that our children are our wealth, and that families are its custodian.”
– Robert W. Patterson, an adjunct research fellow at the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, served in the George W. Bush administration as senior speechwriter at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and at the Small Business Administration.