After Trump's victory: Republican-leaning counties experience a sharp & persistent increase in fertility relative to Democratic counties: a 1.1 to 2.6 pct point difference in annual births, depending on the intensity of partisanship

Partisan Fertility and Presidential Elections. Gordon Dahl, Runjing Lu & William Mullins. NBER Working Paper 29058. DOI 10.3386/w29058. Jul 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29058

Abstract: Changes in political leadership drive large changes in economic optimism. We exploit the surprise 2016 election of Trump to identify the effects of a shift in political power on one of the most consequential household decisions: whether to have a child. Republican-leaning counties experience a sharp and persistent increase in fertility relative to Democratic counties: a 1.1 to 2.6 percentage point difference in annual births, depending on the intensity of partisanship. Hispanics, a group targeted by Trump, see fertility fall relative to non-Hispanics, especially compared to rural or evangelical whites. Further, following Trump pre-election campaign visits, relative Hispanic fertility declines.