The use of marriage rates is strange — it only measures the number of marriage in a given year rather than the absolute number of marriages or proportion of married persons to unmarried. In addition, if you wanted to support families, you would go by the population of households with minor children — i.e., places with more families need more transportation options if you buy into the family first idea.
Finally, using states rather than metro areas guarantees that too much will go to entire states with high rates rather than enhancing transportation in the communities families actually live in.
As you point out towards the end, this seems to be motivated heavily by culture war nonsense instead of real policy to achieve certain goals.
I’m not too shocked by this though. I remember watching the video Ray Delahanty of CityNerd made about the “official” Agenda47 and “unofficial” Project 2025 plans on his YouTube some months ago. The proposals written about here agree pretty well with his conclusions that the Trump DOT will try to siphon as much money as possible to red states and highways while deprioritizing rail, public transit, etc.
While I largely agree with Chuck Marohn's take that this is likely not a productive policy proposal, the idea that cities would lose out mainly because they have more young adults who aren't yet having kids is only true to an extent and is far from universal.
This issue is also easily circumvented by simply using age adjusted birth rates or total fertility, rather then simple birth rates. And, surprise surprise, age adjusted fertility still tends to be significantly higher in most red states then in most blue states, and higher in most outlying suburbs and exurbs then in most dense urban ones, and yes, in more conservative places then in more progressive ones, all else being equal. .
The main exceptions to the above are: 1) For those large cities with the largest youthful immigrant populations which do tend to have higher then average age adjusted birth rates.
And 2) many large cities also actually have higher non age-adjusted birth rates (but lower age adjusted birth rates) then surrounding areas, but a lower percentage of children, as they are home to a disproportionate number of couples when they first have children before they move away before their first child reaches school age. This is true in cities such as San Francisco compared to it's outlying suburbs. The more conservative small cities, towns and rural areas of inland California still tend to have significsntly higher birth rates then SF by any measure however.
Today, the young adult urban concentration is mainly true only for a certain segment of the upper middle class these days, especially in university towns or nearby areas. The fact is, even most young adults in the United States are now suburbanites or exurbanites or residents of smaller, less progressive cities with higher then average birth rates.
It would be interesting to hear one more piece of evidence about DOT's plans. Do we know for a fact they are only going to build highways? I'm guessing, yes, and perhaps Addison has shared this in a previous piece. The vaccine and mask aspect is gross, but it seems like there is a version of prioritizing families that is reasonable. Building public transportation in places where people are settling down seems like a way to create communities where people can age in place.
Maybe we could hear about what mechanism used to be used for making these decisions? Ironically, I think DOT has always spent more on red, rural states.
The most densely populated state, New Jersey, along with its neighbor New York are underfunded at basically all levels. They are among the states with lowest return of tax dollars, while the deep south on the other hand, gets way more than they put in.
Presumably this goes to transportation funding as well, where the two longest NJ highways are funded by tolls and there are very few interstate bridges that aren't tolled.
The use of marriage rates is strange — it only measures the number of marriage in a given year rather than the absolute number of marriages or proportion of married persons to unmarried. In addition, if you wanted to support families, you would go by the population of households with minor children — i.e., places with more families need more transportation options if you buy into the family first idea.
Finally, using states rather than metro areas guarantees that too much will go to entire states with high rates rather than enhancing transportation in the communities families actually live in.
As you point out towards the end, this seems to be motivated heavily by culture war nonsense instead of real policy to achieve certain goals.
I’m not too shocked by this though. I remember watching the video Ray Delahanty of CityNerd made about the “official” Agenda47 and “unofficial” Project 2025 plans on his YouTube some months ago. The proposals written about here agree pretty well with his conclusions that the Trump DOT will try to siphon as much money as possible to red states and highways while deprioritizing rail, public transit, etc.
While I largely agree with Chuck Marohn's take that this is likely not a productive policy proposal, the idea that cities would lose out mainly because they have more young adults who aren't yet having kids is only true to an extent and is far from universal.
This issue is also easily circumvented by simply using age adjusted birth rates or total fertility, rather then simple birth rates. And, surprise surprise, age adjusted fertility still tends to be significantly higher in most red states then in most blue states, and higher in most outlying suburbs and exurbs then in most dense urban ones, and yes, in more conservative places then in more progressive ones, all else being equal. .
The main exceptions to the above are: 1) For those large cities with the largest youthful immigrant populations which do tend to have higher then average age adjusted birth rates.
And 2) many large cities also actually have higher non age-adjusted birth rates (but lower age adjusted birth rates) then surrounding areas, but a lower percentage of children, as they are home to a disproportionate number of couples when they first have children before they move away before their first child reaches school age. This is true in cities such as San Francisco compared to it's outlying suburbs. The more conservative small cities, towns and rural areas of inland California still tend to have significsntly higher birth rates then SF by any measure however.
Today, the young adult urban concentration is mainly true only for a certain segment of the upper middle class these days, especially in university towns or nearby areas. The fact is, even most young adults in the United States are now suburbanites or exurbanites or residents of smaller, less progressive cities with higher then average birth rates.
It would make more sense -- preemption apart -- to target policies that promote natalist ends rather than the end itself.
It would be interesting to hear one more piece of evidence about DOT's plans. Do we know for a fact they are only going to build highways? I'm guessing, yes, and perhaps Addison has shared this in a previous piece. The vaccine and mask aspect is gross, but it seems like there is a version of prioritizing families that is reasonable. Building public transportation in places where people are settling down seems like a way to create communities where people can age in place.
Maybe we could hear about what mechanism used to be used for making these decisions? Ironically, I think DOT has always spent more on red, rural states.
The most densely populated state, New Jersey, along with its neighbor New York are underfunded at basically all levels. They are among the states with lowest return of tax dollars, while the deep south on the other hand, gets way more than they put in.
Presumably this goes to transportation funding as well, where the two longest NJ highways are funded by tolls and there are very few interstate bridges that aren't tolled.