{"id":67715,"date":"2015-09-03T08:49:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T13:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67715"},"modified":"2015-09-03T11:59:28","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T16:59:28","slug":"that-thing-about-republican-marriages-being-happier-isnt-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/09\/03\/that-thing-about-republican-marriages-being-happier-isnt-true\/","title":{"rendered":"That thing about Republican marriages being happier? It isn’t true"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a new\u00a0blog post, Brad Wilcox<\/a> and Nicholas Wolfinger ask<\/a>, \u201care red or blue spouses happier?\u201d Their answer \u2014 suspense \u2014 red.<\/p>\n

Using the 2010-2014 General Social Survey, they start with this descriptive figure:<\/p>\n

\"marital-quality-fig-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then they do adjustments, and show how their statistical controls explain the \u201cRepublican advantage in marital satisfaction.\u201d And get this:<\/p>\n

\"marital-quality-fig3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, with all those controls, the \u201cRepublican advantage\u201d remains.<\/p>\n

That was enough for the sadly credulous David Leonhardt, editor of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> Upshot site, to conclude<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Liberal attitudes toward gender equality, sexual orientation and education all seem to foster stronger, more stable family lives. But Mr. Wilcox\u2019s recent writings strike me as significant because they\u2019re a reminder that conservatism also has values and cultural attitudes \u2014 about the importance of marriage and family life \u2014 that seem to improve the environment in which children grow up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite a conclusion to draw from a 3% net difference in a question on marital happiness \u2014 not exactly the best measure of \u201cthe environment in which children grow up.\u201d But more importantly, I think it\u2019s empirically\u00a0wrong anyway.<\/p>\n

Wilcox and Wolfinger left out all the details of their analysis, but it was easy to replicate it pretty closely. As a left-versus-right story it just doesn\u2019t hold up. The GSS allows people to specify eight party identifications (including \u201cother party\u201d), not just three (Democrat, Republican, Independent). Wilcox and Wolfinger code those as \u201cIndependent, near Democrat\/Republican\u201d as identifying with the parties, but they don\u2019t show the whole pattern:<\/p>\n

\"marital-happiness-partyid.xlsx\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The upward slope toward \u201cstrong Democrats\u201d undermines the left-right story. Still, the figure skews right. When I apply the statistical controls, however, the differences are muted:<\/p>\n

\"marital-happiness-partyid.xlsx\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now the \u201cstrong Democrats\u201d appear happier than all but the \u201cstrong Republicans.\u201d And not even the \u201cstrong Republicans\u201d are significantly more likely to say they\u2019re \u201cvery happy\u201d in marriage than the \u201cstrong Democrats.\u201d Here\u2019s the relevant part of the table:<\/p>\n

\"marital-happiness-partyid-coefs\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lots of ways you could interpret this. But I\u2019m pretty sure the Wilcox and Wolfinger conclusion is not supported: \u201cmarried Republicans are more likely than married Democrats to say they are in very happy marriages.\u201d And the Leonhardt conclusion is just ridiculous (insofar as it\u2019s based on these data).<\/p>\n

Note: I did this really quickly. If I made a mistake, feel free to correct me. But I\u2019m still calling this a \u201cresearch brief\u201d and a \u201creport.\u201d \u00a0More methodological details\u00a0<\/em>here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He writes the blog\u00a0Family Inequality<\/a>, where this post originally appeared<\/a>,\u00a0and is the author of <\/em>The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change<\/a>. You can follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a new\u00a0blog post, Brad Wilcox and Nicholas Wolfinger ask, \u201care red or blue spouses happier?\u201d Their answer \u2014 suspense \u2014 red. Using the 2010-2014 General Social Survey, they start with this descriptive figure: Then they do adjustments, and show how their statistical controls explain the \u201cRepublican advantage in marital satisfaction.\u201d And get this: So, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[329,272,85],"class_list":["post-67715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-emotion","tag-marriagefamily","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/08\/41.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67715"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67820,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67715\/revisions\/67820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}