More Moore

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss the  conservative movement.   The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Jon Swaine and David Smith at The Guardian:

Stephen Moore, the economics commentator chosen by Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, was found in contempt of court after failing to pay his ex-wife hundreds of thousands of dollars in alimony, child support and other debts.

Court records in Virginia obtained by the Guardian show Moore, 59, was reprimanded by a judge in November 2012 for failing to pay Allison Moore more than $300,000 in spousal support, child support and money owed under their divorce settlement.

Moore continued failing to pay, according to the court filings, prompting the judge to order the sale of his house to satisfy the debt in 2013. But this process was halted by his ex-wife after Moore paid her about two-thirds of what he owed, the filings say.

In a divorce filing in August 2010, Moore was accused of inflicting “emotional and psychological abuse” on his ex-wife during their 20-year marriage. Allison Moore said in the filing she had been forced to flee their home to protect herself. She was granted a divorce in May 2011.
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Moore has lamented the steady decline in US marriage numbers, asserting in an October 2014 article that “intact families” were important for the economy and criticising “those who cheer divorce as a form of women’s liberation”.
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Moore’s 2018 book Trumponomics, co-authored with the veteran economist Arthur Laffer, said many Americans felt “a sense of not being loved (tied to divorce and family breakup)” and argued this was one reason people should be required to work to receive money from government assistance programs.

Demographics, Social Issues, and the Vote

At The New York Times, Thomas Edsall writes:

As traditional economic divisions in politics have weakened, other factors are helping to determine partisan affiliation.

Lesthaeghe and Neidert have found, for example, that the higher the non-Hispanic white birthrate of a state, the stronger its vote in 2004 for Bush. Figure 5 shows the striking correlation:

Neidert and Lesthaeghe are looking at voting behavior both as a driver of the contemporary demographic transition and as stemming from it — from the differences, that is, between states and other localities in the embrace of new behavioral norms. Factors shaping political choices are less tied to classic class distinctions and increasingly related to values conflicts regarding family formation.

Writing with Johan Surkyn, Neidert and Lesthaeghe consider the impact on voters of same-sex households, cohabiting households, births to teenagers, births to unmarried women, divorce and separation, the percentage of two-parent households, fertility postponement, fertility decline brought on by contraception and abortion, the percentage of women without children in the household, rates of early or late marriage, the disconnection between marriage and procreation, and so forth.

These topics both feed and reflect what social scientists call “ideational” transformation, which is emerging from trends toward “secularization and the subsequent accentuation of individualistic expressive values,” as well as from the backlash against such trends.

Democratic strength is now concentrated in fewer but more heavily populated areas. Polarization has intensified as voters in over half the nation’s counties cast landslide margins for one presidential candidate or the other. These tendencies are intensifying and have spilled over to Congressional elections, leading to legislative paralysis. Self-perpetuating clusters of the like-minded lead voters and their representatives away from the center.

Housing, Marriage, and Voting

George Hawley,  "Home Affordability, Female Marriage Rates and Vote Choice in the 2000 US Presidential Election: Evidence from US Counties," Party Politics 18 (September 2012):  771-789.

This article tests the hypothesis that differences in the housing market can partially explain why some American counties are strongly Republican and others strongly Democratic, and that this phenomenon can be largely attributed to the relationship between home values and marriage rates within counties. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that, in the 2000 election, George W. Bush did comparatively better in counties with relatively affordable single-family homes, even when controlling for other economic, demographic and regional variables. Using county-level data, I test this hypothesis using spatial-lag regression models, and provide further evidence using individual-level survey data. My results indicate a statistically significant relationship between Bush’s percentage of the vote at the county level and the median value of
owner-occupied homes, and that at least part of this is explained by the relationship between home values and marriage rates among young women.

In The Weekly Standard, Jonathan V. Last spells the practical implications for Republicans.  Specifically, they should back populist-minded policies that contain housing costs and promote marriage.

 This isn’t a heavy lift. There’s an enormous amount of research demonstrating that marriage makes people happier, healthier, and wealthier. The most recent addition to the literature came just a few weeks ago in the form of a report titled Knot Yet, by Kay Hymowitz, Brad Wilcox, Jason Carroll, and Kelleen Kaye, which examined the same delayed-marriage phenomenon that Hawley was studying in his model.

The Knot Yet authors have put together a list of policy ideas that could help Americans get to marriage earlier. For starters, Republicans could champion nontraditional degrees and vocational training instead of robotically pushing the universal four-year degree, which these days too often comes with a crushing load of debt. When Republicans talk about reforming the tax code they ought to advocate measures that will make family formation more affordable—like increased child tax credits—and be wary of plans—like removing the mortgage-interest deduction—which could make it more difficult.

Other ideas abound. Lately some Republicans have become obsessed with trying to outbid Democrats on issues, such as immigration and same-sex marriage, which do not offer any obvious political advantages. If they’re going to get into bidding wars, why not do it over a suite of issues that could actually bear electoral fruit? For instance, today Democrats are the only ones promoting family-friendly workplace policies. Hawley’s research suggests that Republicans ought to be competing in this space, too, helping to mitigate the professional costs young men and women incur by entering marriage and family life, and thus encouraging more of them to take the plunge.