One True God – not as popular as you might think
The above results are from an Ipsos MORI from last summer. Please note, the opinions above are restricted only to those who asserted a religious affiliation. Obviously in Saudi Arabia this is irrelevant, as nearly the whole population has a religious affiliation. But it is important in Japan, because there nearly 2 out of 3 […]
Iran is relatively liberal on social issues
We’ll be talking about Iran a lot in the near future in the United States. I doubt we’ll invade the country (thank god). But one thing I think needs to be emphasized: on social issues Iran is more “progressive” than many of our close allies in the region, like Saudi Arabia, and one of the […]
The Arab world’s demographic transition
In the post below I stumbled upon a weird datum. Kuwait’s total fertility is now below 3. The average estimates seem to be ~2.5 or so. This surprised me, as my impression was that Gulf Arab petroleum based states tended to encourage pro-natalism. This was both a matter of ideology, and also because the small […]
At the American Antipode
Argentina has famously gone from being the 10th wealthiest to the 60th wealthiest nation in the world over the past 100 years. But I was curious about the trends for its neighbors as well in a world context.
Which Hispanics identify as white?
I wanted to clarify a few issues with the Census’ American Community Survey. These data come from the interval of 2006-2008, and they allowed me to query the proportional of various Latino/Hispanic groups who identified as white. I knew in the aggregate that the majority of America’s Latinos identified as white, but I was […]
Don’t overgeneralize about 2.5 billion people
With the current economic malaise in the developed economies and the rise of the “B.R.I.C.s” you hear a lot about “China” and “India.” There is often a tacit acknowledge that China and India are large diverse nations, but nevertheless in a few paragraphs they often get reduced to some very coarse generalizations. What’s worse is […]
In which states do grandchildren live at home?
I recently noted that the SDA Archive has an American Community Survey interface. The ACS has huge sample sizes because the US government can afford to do extensive surveys. And naturally you find some really interesting facts. For example, there’s a variable which tells you about the presence of grandchildren in the household. In some […]
Don’t count old stock Anglo-America out
One of the things I really hate are unqualified linear projections. They’re so useless most of the time. A science fiction magazine will give you more insight about the future than the United Nations population projection for the year 2100. This …
The liberal religious and astrology
In the comments below a weird fact came to light: it does not seem that liberal/Democrat reduced skepticism toward astrology vs. conservatives/Republicans can be explained just by a secularization, and therefore diminished Christian orthodoxy. There ar…
Republicans more skeptical of astrology than Democrats
Someone on twitter was curious about GOP attitudes toward astrology. I left the party breakdown out of the previous post because ideology accounts for most party differences. In other words, conservatives are more skeptical of astrology than liberals, …
Smart people accept evolution
At Culture of Science there’s a little discussion about whether acceptance of evolution indicates intelligence. Looking at the GSS data there doesn’t seem to be a strong causal relationship when you control for other variables. But there is…
1 out of 3 young Iranian men “gay”?
Married at age 21
A few years ago the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asserted that his nation did not have gays as they did in the West. What Ahmadinejad seems to have meant is that a public gay identity does not exist in Iran. He has to be …
Liberals more politically picky in mates?
In the early 2000s I recall Joel Grus telling me how reality television would become a pretty powerful exploratory tool for social science. I’m not quite sure of that now (there here’s a game-theoretic analysis of Survivor!). For example, c…
Probability of pregnancy by age
I just finished reading My Fertility Crisis, which is excerpted from a longer piece you can get on Kindle for $1.99. The author is a single woman in her early 40s who is going through IVF treatments, without success so far. She outlines the choices she…
Smart educated men less likely to think cheating always wrong
Lots of commentary below on my post about extramarital sex. I guess that’s fine, but I’m really not too interested your theories, I can do basic logic after introspection too. In fact, I can go down the street and ask a random person and I&…
Tolerance of extramarital sex by sex
Are Empowered Women Driving Reduced Tolerance Of Extramarital Affairs?:
My girlfriend’s theory about this, which makes sense to me, is that as women’s labor market opportunities have improved their dependency on husbands for economic security has d…
Goal met on the reader survey, now the data….
We’re well north of 500 for the reader survey. Thanks to everyone who participated. I’ll let it run until Saturday morning and then close it. I figure if you aren’t reading the blog at least once a week right now you’re not a co…
Rwanda vs. Burundi
Reading Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. Rwanda looms large in the narrative. Out of curiosity I wanted to use Google Data Explorer to compare Rwanda to Burundi. The two nations are almost mirror …
Which state has the most PhDs in the legislature?
Josh Rosenau points me to a new infographic from The Chronicle of Higher Education. A lot of the stuff isn’t too interesting or surprising. Are you surprised that 25% of the state legislators in Arkansas don’t have a college degree, the hig…
The limits of the mean and the moderate
Red States vs. Blue States: Going Beyond the Mean:
In recent years, many scholars have explored the degree of polarization between red and blue states (red states are those carried by Republicans at the presidential level; blue states are those carried…