<p>“I’m really saying that no one has compared similarly-situated people in different states. That is where the real fun lies.”</p>
<p>Not likely, until Texans immigrate to Framingham, and Massies to Galveston. We could compare the rate among undocumented immigrants, though.</p>
<p>Well, it would be where the real fun lies. I imagine that states like Florida have a low divorce rate for the simple reason that they have a very elderly population - very few people divorce in their 60s. If you take out the college students from OOS, Ma has an average age of 46 - pretty old. Again, not many people divorce at age 50.</p>
<p>Hypothetically,</p>
<p>Two states have identically-sized populations of 150 adults each.<br>
-In state 1, 100 people are between 20 and 25. The remaining 50 people are between 30 and 40.<br>
-In state 2, 100 people are between 30 and 40 and the remaining 50 are in the 20-25 age range.<br>
-Everyone gets married.</p>
<p>Hypothetically, again, the divorce rates are as follows:
state 1, 20-25: 50%
state 2, 20-25: 60%</p>
<p>State 1, 30-40: 20%
State 2, 30-40: 25%</p>
<p>So State 1 has lower divorce rates, right? Nope! Let’s do the math.</p>
<p>Let’s calculate divorce rates:
State 1: 100(.5) + 50(.20) = 50 + 10 = 60 divorces per 150 people
State 2: 50(.6) + 100(.25) = 30 + 25 = 55 divorces per 150 people</p>
<p>YET, you have a better chance of staying married in State 1! (See corresponding lower divorce rates for each age bracket.) The discrepancy comes because there are more young, higher-divorce rate people in state 1. If you normalize for number of people in each age range, you see that you would rather be in State 1.</p>
<p>I know that some people are going to yell and scream before thinking about it, but be a statistics weenie before you do so. A slight shift in the population (different ages of people there, different trends) can show you the why of a statistic. </p>
<p>Now, it is entirely possible that the “red” states, while having higher divorce rates and lower ages of first marriage, still have higher divorce rates, even when normalizing for factors that contribute to divorce. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe, once you go through all the numbers, it’s better to be in a red state than a blue state, regardless of what age you are when you wed.</p>
<p>Barrons,</p>
<p>The thing is PP is not forcing anyone to DO anything. The conservative alternative DOES force a person in one direction. If that is the best direction, shouldn’t it be able to stand on it’s own, with other options to compare with?</p>
<p>That’s what prochoice means to allow for a choice. It doesn’t have to match mine. </p>
<p>I always find it ironic that the same groups that want to eliminate choice also want to eliminate services and support for those unwanted children after they’re born. </p>
<p>Before you get fired up, I support your choice not to use these services. I don’t support your choice to deny my or my family access for what ever reason “we” might have to use them. Heck, we might even choose not to. But it should be our choice.</p>
<p>DRJ, there are many instances where “equal opportunity” as opposed to qualitative equal access is as counterfeit as a three-dollar bill. As to the current topic of discussion, saying “You can have access to Plan B if you live in someplace where you can get to where it’s dispensed and if your local “community standards” allow” makes “equal opportunity” a sham.</p>
<p>Kinda reminds me of the new Georgia Voting I.D. law. Yep, anyone can get the I.D. It’s just that the process for doing so is stacked against the less educated, the poor, and those without transportation. But it’s “fair.” Ptui.</p>
<p>Getting exercised about whether something is “socialist” or not is like getting exercised about fluoride in our water supplies messing with our precious bodily fluids: quaint, ananchronistic, irrelevant, non-productive.</p>
<p>That is certainly a matter of individual taste, as “better” is based on…what? Better because “red state” women are more fertile? People are less educated? Cost of living is lower? What?</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting article from the American Conservative on birthrates and voting patterns:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.isteve.com/babygap.htm[/url]”>http://www.isteve.com/babygap.htm</a></p>
<p>actually- being concerned about fluoride isn’t paranoid 
<a href=“http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=34527[/url]”>http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=34527</a>
On Wednesday, a panel of the Washington, D.C.-based National Academy of Sciences released a report finding that fluoride is less safe than previously thought, and that the federal Environmental Protection Agencys safety limit on fluoride in water should be lowered. Specifically, it said that levels of the cavity-fighting substance currently allowed under federal water-safety rules cause a harmful variety of dental fluorosis, a mottling of the tooth that in its more severe form actually can cause cavities.</p>
<p>hereshoping:</p>
<p>I agree that the Guttmacher Institute may not be an unbiased source. I did see, however, that a previous report it issued in 2000 was the basis for a lot of discussion from many different points of the social and political spectrum. I would tend to think that the statistics on teenage pregnancies and abortions are fairly reliable (of course, there is the issue of reporting). It’s the policy recommendations, the discussions of causation and correlation that would be far more open to different interpretations.</p>
<p>aries:</p>
<p>There was a discussion some time ago about the correlation between early marriage in the red states and the higher incidence of divorce there.
Of course, there are several possible explanations for the connection between the two: 1. the longer people are married, the higher the probability of divorce (the converse of people who do not marry do not divorce). 2. people who marry younger are immature; their personalities are unformed. As they grow older, they have less in common with the person they married when young and thus more likely to get a divorce.
I actually read a piece that suggested that the concern over family values was a reaction to the reality of human imperfection and the high incidence of divorce. However, other analyses have sought to cast doubt on the methodology used to calculate the incidence of divorce in different states. I’ll try to recall where I saw those various analyses.</p>
<p>On a sidenote: I do believe that the stats on teenage pregnancies do not distinguish between married and unmarried teens.</p>
<p>
The goal of the American democratic system is equal opportunity, not equal results. Results vary because people vary. Apparently that’s not the system you want.</p>
<p>“The goal of the American democratic system is equal opportunity, not equal results. Results vary because people vary. Apparently that’s not the system you want”</p>
<p>Republicans=government should provide for equality of opportunity
Democrats=government should provide for equality of outcome</p>
<p>Well I’m glad you folks agree with yourselves about what the people who disagree with you believe in, despite what those other people have the nerve to think they believe in. There’s no better way that I know of to built a reality-proof world view!</p>
<p>Bogus postures, both of 'em. </p>
<p>If one lives in a town where “community standards” impede the access of a woman to birth control while someone living in another area has no such problem, the difference is not because individuals vary. </p>
<p>If a young woman lives in a town where fact-based sex education is not provided so that she isn’t competently informed about what options exist and another woman living elsewhere has had access to fact-based education, the difference in the results is not becasuse “individuals vary.” </p>
<p>If a woman in one locale is not provided with the names, locations, and contact info for service providers because “the community isn’t behind it” and a woman in another community has been provided with such information, the difference in results isn’t because “individuals vary.” </p>
<p>If one woman’s alternative is finding a ride to a clinic 40 miles away while another can hop on a bus for an anonymous 15 minute ride, the difference is results isn’t because “individuals vary.”</p>
<p>And bear in mind that we’re talking about minors who don’t even have any control over where they live, not that that would excuse the disparity for non-minors.</p>
<p>How anyone can indulge in contortions in the name of ideological cant to suggest that this constitutes “equal opportunity” without being ashamed to look in the mirror is beyond me.</p>
<p>The ‘right to sex education’ is not in the Constitution. Nor is their a ‘right to easy access to information’ nor a "right to convenient access to ANY service’. </p>
<p>Some towns have great colleges-some none, some have great hospitals–some none, etc. That is not a Constitutional disparity.</p>
<p>How anyone can indulge in contortions in the name of ideological cant to suggest that this constitutes “equal opportunity” without being ashamed to look in the mirror is beyond me. </p>
<p>I am respectfully unsure of what point you were making with that post. Maybe there was so much going on that you lost me.</p>
<p>“Republicans=government should provide for equality of opportunity
Democrats=government should provide for equality of outcome”</p>
<p>Frankly, I think the goals shouldn’t have anything to do with “equality” of either kind, but with justice. I’ve always thought the best thought-out elaboration of the concept of justice, as it relates to opportunity/income, was offered by John Rawls ("Theory of Justice, 1971).</p>
<p>Rawls argued that in a state of nature, people designing the optimal society would choose to maximize the level of well-being of its poorest members. They would do this, not out of charity, but out of self-interest. They would do so because people are averse to risk and would not know ahead of time where they would find their places in the anticipated society. If you knew that you might end up on the bottom, as it were, it would be in your self-interest to design a bottom that was acceptable (and seen as just) by those who occupied it.</p>
<p>But to the extent that people insist on holding their current “place in society” (call it class, but it could also apply to race or gender or ethnic hegemony), and can predict in advance their places in society, to that extent the desire to maximize the level of well-being of its poorest members, out of anything other than a charitable instinct, dissipates. </p>
<p>Neo-liberal “theology” is that maximizing differences in outcome is a “just” thing, as it provides the only possible engine of growth. The two ways of maximizing difference is to enhance the position of those at top, and minimize the position of those on bottom. The ‘soft-soap’ neo-liberals believe that some of the frothiness at top can then be raked off to make the condition of those at bottom seem more tolerable.</p>
<p>ZM:
</p>
<p>A retreat to empty sloganeering that doesn’t bear on the discussion in terms of specific circumstances. </p>
<p>In #252, I’ve responded to the notion that “equal opportunity” is either “equal” or sufficient.</p>
<p>It’s a pain when circumstances don’t fit the slogans, I realize.</p>
<p>Now, Mini, that’s interesting. Many people frame domestic issues on all sorts of two-dimensional continua. Whereas at root I see many as a three-sided tug-of-war between Freedom, Justice, and Equality; absolute fealty to any one of the three suppresses the other two.</p>
<p>I don’t even have a suggested “balance point” because the weight of my preferences changes from issue to issue. I refuse to be held captive by the small hobgoblins that comprise foolish consistencies.</p>
<p>I wasn’t sloganeering, the Dad. I should have clarified and meant to but I lost my train of thought. That’s something that a teacher recently said to my daughter. It was not intend to be reflective of the current debate, just that the previous post reminded me of it. I apologize for the confusion.</p>
<p>“Freedom, Justice, and Equality; absolute fealty to any one of the three suppresses the other two.”</p>
<p>With Rawls, I don’t think “equality” has any substantive meaning, and freedom is wholly contextual. (I don’t believe in “natural rights” - I think the truth is closer to being Hobbesian.)</p>
<p>Unfortunately for some, our country is not based on the theories of Hobbes or Rawls. I believe the founders of this country firmly believed in natural rights - among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not only that, but they believed they were “endowed by our Creator.” I don’t believe they referenced a “social contract.” Nor a Humanist Manifesto! And I believe they determined that government is instituted to secure these rights deriving its power from the <em>consent</em> of the governed.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for some, the Christian religion also believes in natural God-given rights which are compatable with our form of government but not with the socialism being incrementally inserted into our system. That’s why Christians are so pesky to our social planners. They tend to be a bit hyper-vigilant about ideas such as dispensing birth control in schools. Children are no longer being taught these distinctions; they are being trained in doing what is determined by the state to be the “common good.” And that is why if we’re not a village already, we will be soon.</p>