Interesting study on Gender, Divorce & Political Affiliation

[rucky]

This article got me thinking about the GOP's motives for this promotion of marriage hooey...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_10/c3773041.htm

Divorce and Women Voters

If there's one long-term electoral trend worrying Republicans, it's the widening gender gap in voting behavior. In the early postwar period, a majority of women favored Republican candidates, while men were more inclined toward Democrats. In recent decades, however, voting patterns have reversed sharply, with far more women supporting Democrats and men voting Republican.

Recent elections highlight the shift. The support of women was a big factor in Bill Clinton's victories, and if women's votes alone had been counted in 2000, Al Gore would have won by a landslide. While polls suggest that George W. Bush has at least temporarily closed the gender gap after September 11, it still exists at the Congressional level.

The crucial question for political strategists of both parties, of course, is just why this has occurred. Conventional explanations center on such developments as the sharp increase in the ranks of working women, the rise of feminism, and women's concern over social issues such as abortion rights.

In a new study, however, economists Lena C. Edlund and Rohini Pande of Columbia University conclude that the major cause is the differing impact of the decline in marriage on the economic well-being of men and women. Since the early 1960s, as the proportion of marriages ending in divorce has risen to nearly 50% and as more people have chosen to defer marriage or remain single, the unmarried share of the adult population has surged to 44%. In the study, which will appear in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Edlund and Pande relate this trend to the reversal in men's and women's party allegiances and the subsequent widening of the political gender gap.
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Me: The trouble about the study is that it doesn't offer stats on the political affiliations of married couples, and it gives no real indication that promoting marriage would bring more women into the GOP. Also, completely ignoring the very high rate of divorce among evangelical Christians - which is I'm sure the primary motivating factor. But I do believe that income is one motivation for the latest decision.

So how do we approach it? It's a silly wedge issue, but if we oppose it head on, it could be turned around on us that we don't support economic equality for women....or that our opposition is recklessly political, because Democrats stand to gain from high divorce rates.

Ironically, the only way to take issue with it is to go on a classic conservative diatribe about fiscal responsibility and smaller government that stays out of social programs. Strange.