Philip N. Cohen | Lightnews

Philip N Cohen

@philipncohen.com

11K followers 780 following 8.2K posts

Sociologist and demographer, University of Maryland; SocArXiv director.

New book: Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists https://cup.columbia.edu/book/citizen-scholar/9780231555418

Website: philipncohen.com
Blog: familyinequality.com .. more

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Philip N. Cohen is an American sociologist. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and director of SocArXiv, an open archive of the social sciences. .. more

Political science 34%

Sociology 29%

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Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · Nov 26

I'm about 18 months and 20,000 words into the "pronatalism" tag on Family Inequality. Surely this means my book is almost done.
familyinequality.wordpress.com/tag/pronatal...

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 6h

Got a little lost there for a bit, but they have a reassuring tendency in that magazine, however much they circle around a point, to end up at the conclusion that what we really need is "a just society." Can't argue against it.

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 7h

wow, I think "birth are become more political polarized" is the most errors I ever published in a six-word sequence.

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h

"Factcheck [of Lyman Stone]: Conservatives want children, Democrats want sexual deviance."

It is true that birth are become more political polarized.

familyinequality.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/f...

/1

graph: US women's births by cohort, age, and political views

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 8h

Yikes, it was 6 years ago Lyman invited me to be on a panel he organized at AEI about falling birth rates. Forgot about that.

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 8h

Did they not offer "increasing immigration" as an option?

Opinion Today @opiniontoday.bsky.social · 1d

A majority of Americans say lowering prices should be a higher priority than controlling immigration — NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.
More, via Opinion Today:
opiniontoday.substack.com/p/260205-top...

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h

It’s not perfect, but it’s better than low labor force participation, high birth rates, low education, and a stagnant economy — run by a patriarchal hierarchy that rams “traditionalism” down the throats of its disempowered subjects, partly by scaring them about sexual deviance and low birth rates
/7

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h

But the real point is that, just as these various outcomes are co-determined across the lives of individuals, they also unfold together within societies. Women enter the labor force, they have fewer children, those children get more education, and the economy benefits...
/6

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h

For what it's worth, here's a regression using GSS data to show that education has a bigger effect on births for women than political views:
/5

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h

You shouldn't treat political views as a fixed cause of births, which he knows. So he comes up with stuff like this to assert this imagined process of alignment, "you can find tons of Obama-Trump voters: and they tend to be Obama voters with kids"
/4

"In the 21st century, the parties are realigning on fertility. You can find tons of Bush voters who are also Biden
voters: and you can predict the switch by identifying Bush voters with unusually low numbers of children.
Likewise, you can find tons of Obama-Trump voters: and they tend to be Obama voters with kids (at least among
whites)."

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h

You can just as well argue that the parties are aligning by education as by birth rates. Note how much this looks like the first figure. Education is also become polarized.
/3

Proportion of US women with a BA degree, by birth cohort, age, and political views.

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h

But not that: “It is now widely understood that having babies is essentially a right-wing activity ... Dems are increasingly *definitionally* the party of sexual nontraditionalism ... [people] fundamentally become Dems because the Dem party is friendly and welcoming to their sexual behaviors.”
/2

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 9h