Conservatives Outbreed Liberals—Gap Explodes

Hands holding a notebook with baby name lists near a crib — Photo: SpeedKingz / Shutterstock

Conservatives are having more babies than liberals, and the gap just keeps growing wider.

Quick Take

A new research brief finds conservatives average 1.40 children compared to 1.09 for liberals.
Fifty-one percent of liberals report having no children, versus 40 percent of conservatives.
Researchers tie the gap to marriage rates and how many kids people actually want, not just outcomes.
The pattern isn’t new — surveys have tracked a similar split for decades, and it appears to be widening.

The Numbers Behind The Divide

The Institute for Family Studies surveyed 7,000 Americans between ages 18 and 54 and found a clear split by ideology. Conservatives reported an average of 1.40 children. Liberals reported 1.09. Researchers describe the gap as statistically significant, meaning it’s unlikely to be random chance or a fluke in the sample.

The childlessness numbers tell the same story from a different angle. Fifty-one percent of liberals in the survey have no children at all. Among conservatives, that number drops to 40 percent. That’s an eleven-point gap in who becomes a parent in the first place, not just how many kids parents choose to raise.

It’s Not Just Births — It’s Marriage And Desire

A separate Institute for Family Studies analysis, drawing on survey data from nearly 13,000 women collected between 2021 and 2025, digs into why the gap exists. Conservative women don’t just end up with more kids. They say they want more kids, and they marry more often, and marry young enough to have them.

That distinction matters. If the gap were purely about accidents of biology or economics, you’d expect similar desired family sizes across ideology, with life just getting in the way differently. Instead, the desire itself splits along political lines. That points to something deeper than income or job timing driving the trend.

This Split Has Been Building For Decades

This isn’t a brand-new phenomenon born from Trump-era politics. Back in 2006, ABC News reported on what researchers already called “The Political Fertility Gap,” citing General Social Survey data showing 100 unrelated liberal adults produced 147 children while 100 unrelated conservatives produced 208. The lean toward larger conservative families has been visible for at least twenty years.

A 2018 peer-reviewed study reinforced the same pattern using the same long-running General Social Survey. It found that as political attitudes shift more conservative, average number of children born tends to rise. Right-wing respondents outpaced left-wing respondents in average family size across multiple datasets, not just one isolated American survey.

A Newer Wrinkle: Falling Below Replacement

A 2026 peer-reviewed paper adds a sharper edge to the story. It finds that Americans born after the mid-1940s who lean left have fallen below replacement-level fertility — the number of births needed to keep a population steady across generations. Right-leaning Americans, by contrast, have stayed at or above that replacement line. Researchers describe this as a “marked and growing divergence” between the two groups, not a stable gap holding steady over time.

Liberals tend to have fewer children than conservatives do, @olgakhazan writes. She reports on three theories that attempt to explain the partisan fertility gap: https://t.co/kzGOBW9Z2x

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) August 20, 2026

What that means in plain terms: the ideological fertility gap isn’t just persisting, it’s stretching further apart with each new generation. One side of the political spectrum is replacing itself. The other, based on current numbers, is not.

Why This Should Matter To Everyday Readers

Family formation and marriage have long been core conservative values, and this data suggests those values translate directly into larger families and lower childlessness rates. Liberals, meanwhile, report wanting fewer kids and marrying later or less often. The numbers back up what conservatives have said for years — strong marriages built early tend to produce the families people say they actually want.

The debate over falling U.S. birth rates usually gets framed around economics, housing costs, or career timing. This research suggests ideology and family values deserve a seat at that table too. Whatever policies come next to address declining births, they’ll need to grapple with a values gap, not just a financial one.