Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, news of an interesting new study that concludes “This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more left wing. Having sons, by contrast, makes them more right wing.”

Only performed, apparently, on British and German data.  (The full academic papers are available here.) It'll just be a matter of weeks until somebody tries this with American data.

But I'll report that in the Newmark household there are two data points against the weak version of the hypothesis and one against even the strong--based on "switchers"--version.

And I don't believe it, but I don't have a ready alternative explanation for the data.

Comments

[Chris Meisenzahl]

I though the same things you did when I read that report summary. Though I too have no data to back my opinion up. ;-)

[David]

What is not to believe about it? Sure I question its robustness, but I find the evolutionary theory that underlies the findings to be quite intuitive. Ceteris paribus, people choose the action - in this case a politcal party - that they think will most benefit their kin and hence improve the odds that their genes will survive and be passed on to future generations.

[Steve Margolis]

What's the puzzle here Newmark? It all fits Tom Sowell's Conflict of Visions. Someone who is raising a daughter might well drift toward a belief in the perfectibility of human beings--Sowell's unconstrained vision, and so might drift to the left. Someone who is raising a son faces no such hazard. I am shocked that you, of all people, did not make this connection, being quite familiar with Sowell's work and having raised two magnificent daughters.

Still, I wonder if the U.S. results will support the British and German findings. Here, young women do better in school, are disproportionately represented in higher education, and generally seem to exhibit more ambition and self discipline. (For all I know this could be true in Britain and the Germany as well.) Parents of daughters therefore ought to favor social arrangements that refrain from punishing accomplishment. Parents of sons, on the other hand, may find themselves enthusiastic about the presence of a safety net.

[Alexander Wolfe]

Hmmm...I suppose. Though I just had a son that I'm grooming to be the greatest Democratic president since FDR.

[dearieme]

Mr Wolfe: is it because he is a son that you are setting the bar so low?