23-05-2025
Trump's first term coincided with a MAGA baby boom. Will his second?
AS AMERICAN ELECTIONS grow ever more polarised, the line between the personal and political has blurred. Research has shown that following presidential elections, the victor's supporters become more innovative and entrepreneurial, and take more risks with their investments. A paper published in 2022 by Gordon Dahl of the University of California, San Diego and co-authors argued that Donald Trump's first presidential victory over Hillary Clinton appeared to affect even one of life's most consequential choices: whether or not to have children. From late 2016 to the end of 2018, fertility fell much less in Republican-voting areas than in Democratic-voting ones. Relative to expectations based on prior trends, the study said, this Trump bump and Clinton collapse shifted 1-2% of American births from blue counties to red ones.
