1 Comment

ChrisZ
May 11th, 2012 | 2:33 pm

The Kaufmann article on demography is interesting, and of course it makes intuitive sense that the future, in generational terms, “belongs” to people who have more children, rather than to people who have few or no children. (One would have to qualify that statement, but a short post is not the place.)

But I think he errs in assuming that the present-day societal fissures will remain static for the coming generations. I think there’s reason to conclude that we are in the midsts of a re-alignment of familiar coalitions, and that the liberal / conservative divide (and moreso the Democrat / Republican one, which is much more ephemeral) will give way to tensions between earners and receivers, or maybe “Belmonters” and “Fishtowners” (to use Charles Murrays vivid nomenclature).