Returning to everyone's favorite subject, I wrote earlier:
> And if you were to plot divorce rates vs. the percentage of the population
> that voted for GW Bush, I'm sure that you will almost certainly get the
same
> level of correlation. Divorce rates simply go up as a family is
increasingly
> stressed for money and can see little way out of its predictament. These
same
> people often have a tendency to seek simpler, more child-like explanations
as
> well, in both their politics and in their religion.
The term "child-like" seemed to gather the most attention in that previous
posting. Let me stand by that description. I consider it to be relatively
objective. As fundamentalism increases, a stark moral clarity concommitantly
increases (as evidenced by the fundamentalist views on abortion and the death
penalty). In that regard, the former governor of Texas once said that he
never spent a sleepless night worrying about the guilt of the 152 people he
executed during his term in office.
Bigotry similarly increases. Fundamentalist organizations have a pronounced
tendency to espouse anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-gay and
anti-women rhetoric. Further, such organizations have a very strong
predisposition to believe in one of several, highly simplified child-like
creation mythologies and often become aggressively anti-intellectual or
anti-knowledge in their behaviors.
All of this is surprising in that Christ himself never spoke or concerned
himself with any of this, other than to advocate charity, tolerance,
forgiveness and mercy. Such fundamentalist views appear to turn what is
otherwise a magnificient moral philosophy into a superstition, essentially
antithetical in its beliefs to the foundations of Christianity.
But let me address the other part of the paragraph above, the connection
between state divorce rates, state per capita income, business opportunity
and the way people voted in the last election. Because I had a bit of time
today, I created the following table, where:
rank = states ranked by divorce rate
dr = yearly percentage divorce rate
bvi = "business vitality index"
bs = "converted business score", based on a 4.0 grading system
g% = percentage of state voting for Gore
b% = percentage of state voting for Bush
sp = spread in percentage between Gore & Bush
pci = per capita income for the state, in dollars
=======================================================
rank state dr bvi vs g% b% sp pci
=======================================================
1 Massachusetts 2.4 AAA 12 60 33 27 38845
2 Connecticut 2.8 AAA 12 56 39 17 41930
3 New Jersey 3.0 BAB 10 56 41 15 38153
4 Rhode Island 3.2 BCC 7 61 32 29 29984
5 New York 3.3 CAB 9 60 35 25 35884
Pennsylvania 3.3 BBA 10 51 47 4 30617
7 Wisconsin 3.4 ACB 9 48 48 0 28911
North Dakota 3.4 DFD 2 33 61 -28 25538
9 Maryland 3.5 ABA 11 57 40 17 34950
10 Minnesota 3.6 AAA 12 48 46 2 32791
Louisiana 3.6 FDF 1 45 53 -8 24084
12 Illinois 3.7 CBB 8 55 43 12 32755
13 Wash DC 3.9 *** ** 86 9 75 40498
Iowa 3.9 BDB 7 49 48 1 27283
15 Nebraska 4.0 BFC 5 33 63 -30 28564
Vermont 4.0 ABC 9 51 41 10 27992
17 Michigan 4.1 BCB 8 51 47 4 29538
18 South Dakota 4.2 BDD 5 38 60 -22 26301
South Carolina 4.2 CCD 5 41 57 -16 24594
Hawaii 4.2 DFF 1 56 38 18 28554
21 California 4.3 CAA 10 54 42 12 32678
22 Maine 4.4 BCD 6 49 44 5 26385
New Hampshire 4.4 ACC 8 47 48 -1 33928
24 Ohio 4.5 CCB 7 46 50 -4 28619
25 Virginia 4.6 BAA 11 45 52 -7 32295
26 Kansas 4.7 CDC 5 45 52 -7 28507
Utah 4.7 ABA 11 26 67 -51 24202
28 Delaware 4.8 CBB 8 55 42 13 31121
29 Montana 4.9 DFC 3 34 58 -24 23532
30 Missouri 5.0 CCC 6 51 47 -4 28029
West Virginia 5.0 FFD 1 46 52 -6 22725
32 North Carolina 5.1 DCC 5 43 56 -13 27418
Colorado 5.1 AAA 12 42 51 -9 32957
34 Georgia 5.2 CAC 8 43 55 -12 28438
35 Oregon 5.3 CBB 8 47 47 0 28000
36 Texas 5.4 FAC 6 38 59 -21 28486
37 Alaska 5.5 DDD 3 28 59 -31 30997
38 Washington 5.6 AAA 12 50 45 5 31582
39 Mississippi 5.7 FCF 2 42 57 -15 21643
40 Kentucky 5.8 DCD 4 41 47 -16 25057
Arizona 5.8 CCB 7 45 51 -6 25479
42 Florida 5.9 CCC 6 49 49 0 28493
43 New Mexico 6.0 FDC 3 48 48 0 23162
44 Idaho 6.2 CBC 7 28 69 -41 24257
Alabama 6.2 DBF 4 42 57 -15 24426
46 Indiana 6.4 BDC 6 41 57 -16 27532
47 Wyoming 6.5 CDC 5 28 69 -41 28807
48 Tennessee 6.6 CCD 5 48 51 -3 26758
49 Oklahoma 6.7 DCD 5 38 60 -22 24787
50 Arkansas 7.1 DDF 2 45 51 -6 22912
51 Nevada 9.0 DDD 3 46 49 -3 29860
=======================================================
The sources of the various data are:
divorce rates (1994)
http://www.divorcereform.org/94staterates.html
business vitality index (2001)
http://drc.cfed.org/index.php3?section=grades&page=grades
election results (2000)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/president/index2.html
per capita personal income (2001)
http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/regional/spi/
Given this data, I performed a correlation analysis on the various vectors,
excluding Nevada for the reasons discussed earlier. A correlation
coefficient, r, calculates how well one vector predicts the other. If the
resulting r value equals 1, the two phenomena are dead-on perfect predictors
of one another. But if r = 0, knowing a value from one vector tells you
absolutely nothing about the other. They are completely independent
variables. But in real life, you never tend to see these extremes. One web
site says this about how to interpret the r values:
=======================================
Correlations
Jacob Cohen has written the most on this topic. In his well-known book he
suggested, a little ambiguously, that a correlation of 0.5 is large, 0.3 is
moderate, and 0.1 is small (Cohen, 1988). The usual interpretation of this
statement is that anything greater than 0.5 is large, 0.5-0.3 is moderate,
0.3-0.1 is small, and anything smaller than 0.1 is insubstantial, trivial, or
otherwise not worth worrying about.
--http://www.sportsci.org/resource/stats/effectmag.html
=========================================
Based on the data in the table above, the following correlations occur:
divorce rate vs. "business vitality index"
r = .422975 (moderately large correlation)
that is, as business "vitality" falls off in a state, divorce rates rise.
divorce rate vs. Gore/Bush spread*
r = .466563 (moderately large correlation)
that is, as a state becomes more inclined to vote for Bush, divorce
rates rise.
divorce rate vs. Bush vs. entire field*
r = .506506 (large correlation)
that is, as a state becomes more inclined to vote for Bush, divorce
rates rise.
divorce rate vs. per capita income
r = .591819 (large correlation)
that is, as per state capita income rises, divorce rates fall.
*Although I had initially intended to normalize the presidential election
vector by calculating only the spread between Gore and Bush, it became
obvious that by looking at the data that this was a mistake. Ralph Nader had
taken a sizeable percentage (sometimes as much as 10%) of the vote in some
states that might otherwise would have gone to Gore, thus it seemed more
reasonable on reflection to consider Bush vs. the entire field. The
contestants other Gore and Nader represented neglible percentages.
All of these indicators were strongly correlated, state-by-state, as I had
earlier suspected that they would be. I did not correlate any "piety
indices", such as church membership, particularly of the more conservative
denominations, in part because of the controversy they would cause, but you
can do that yourself if you wish. Some data in that regard is available at:
http://pasdc.hbg.psu.edu/pasdc/Data_&_Information/data_by_geog/State_Level_Dat
a.html
However, you can simply look at the data and tell that it will be
approximately equally correlated as well.
The level of granularity in this data is state-wide. That's a large enough
population so that in even the smallest states, we can reasonably presume
that we will hit an equal percentage number of dolts and geniuses, artists
and inventors, thinkers and busboys. Whatever differences we find between the
states, we have to presume are intrinsic to the culture of the various states.
Per capita income is the strongest predictor of divorce rates, followed
closely by conservative Republicanism. As incomes rise, divorces fall fairly
rapidly, and as the percentage voting with what was recently called the
"Moral Majority" increases, so do divorce rates.
Correlation by itself is not proof of causation, but in this case the social
forces that promote higher divorce rates seem clear. All of these factors
create a "syndrome" ("syn" = with, "drome" = run), attributes that literally
run together. To repeat the question that Lou asked:
> ...are you then implying that "Christians" as a whole are generally stupider
> and poorer than average?
Yes, although I would phrase the sentiment differently, as generally being
less well-educated and poorer. And again there are objective measures of the
process: highest degree completed in school, the number of books in the
household, the extent that the family has traveled, etc. vs. the degree of
fundamentalism advocated.
As always however, it's important not to confuse cause and effect. Christian
Fundamentalism is almost certainly not the cause of this lessened education
or improvishment, at least not directly. Rather the fundamentalism is far
more likely to be the consequence of poorer economic conditions and a reduced
belief in the value of education.
Wirt Atmar
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