Shrapnel wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Republicans get divorced more than Democrats.
This is probably because Democrats are, on average, more educated. Educated people take longer to marry. Less-educated people marry quickly, often to an unsuitable person.
It is the values of those associated with the Democratic party, not the Republican party, which reduce divorce rates.
We see the same thing with teenage pregnancy.
And there I was drifting through life thinking that there was at least one problem not created by Republicans.
You've drawn a ridiculous conclusion. Did it ever occur to you that Democrats have lower divorce rates because they advocate informal unions over marriage, and that teenage pregnancy is linked to income level and ethnicity rather than political affiliation? Oh, and claiming that education is an exclusively Democratic attribute is elitism at its best.
I do not think that high divorce rates are caused by Republicanism as such. I was merely pointing out that Bill's hypothesis that Republicans would have lower divorce rates than Democrats was wrong. In reality, education is a confounding variable that makes marriages more likely to succeed, and Americans more likely to be Democrats.
My claim that "the values of those..." requires further clarification. Broadly speaking, Republicans get married because they should do. Democrats get married because they have found someone they want to marry. Of course, this is not always true, but if you were to compare the groups, that's what you'd find. You seem to agree with this - Democrats advocate informal unions and only get married when they want to. You should instead have criticised my assumption that single mothers were either teenagers or divorcees. This is perhaps not a suitable heuristic.
If you were trying to imply that Democratic "divorces" don't count as such because Democrats don't get married as often, that's fine, and basically what I was saying. Kuku is wrong to say that the stat is "divorces per 1000 people" - in both citations, it is divorces per marriage.
One thing that teenage pregancy is linked to is sex education. Republicans advocate for abstinence-only sex education. States that teach abstinence-only sex education have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than those which teach proper sex education.
Finally, I did not say "education is exclusively a Democratic attribute". I said "Democrats tend to be better educated". This is well-documented.
Source 1,
2. Again, this might not be "smart people become Democrats"- remember that college attendance has been rising for decades, and older people tend to be more conservative...