America's Civilizations, Ranked Quantitatively
Many a dark horse and coastal elites only barely hanging on
One of America’s great strengths, as said by Lee Kuan Yew, is that there are “many competing centres of excellence throughout the country.”
Thanks to the federal system, all the states are in competition and are constitutionally banned from opting out with movement or trade barriers. This means winners and losers, which we shall now adjudicate. Not with vibes, but rather, I’ve crunched the numbers, and we’ll learn from the results, like any good truth-seeker.
But which numbers? As I described in my post on the Baby Money Index, there are only two numbers that matter:
Income - Because, barring one exception, it correlates with, and thus captures, everything good (health, education, happiness etc.),
Fertility Rate - Because it’s the one exception, being anti-correlated with income
Therefore, a weighted index of income and fertility is a metric of all good things. That is the Baby Money Index, which is income multiplied by fertility squared. Below are the results, categorized in cultural and geographic “civilizations”:
America’s Top Quartile:
1. Dakota-oming
North Dakota comes in first at 338 kiloChads; it’s got Midwestern values, a low cost of living, religion, and oil. South Dakota has regulatory arbitrage rather than oil, and Wyoming is surprisingly irreligious, so they come in lower but still in the top quarter.
2. Central Cornbelt
This one was a surprise to me, meaning I learned something. Nebraska is killing it at 337 kiloChads, just a hair behind North Dakota. It’s lesser corn-brothers, Kansas, Iowa, and Minnesota, all similarly stack up.
This is genuinely impressive because these places don’t have an obvious geographic advantage, unless corn subsidies really are that lucrative. They seem to combine midwestern values, a strong service sector (Omaha is quietly a financial hub), and a low cost of living.
3. Alaska
Being a petrostate really helps.
4. Texas
The place that started the “American Civilization” discourse. Much of its success seems to be just from being better run, though Latin American immigration and the energy sector certainly help. Rugged individualism, translating to property rights, translating to legalized homebuilding, keeps housing costs low, and even in the hot market of Austin, rents have fallen.
(Hint: Cheap, abundant housing is good for the economy and for fertility).
6. Mormons
I could have said “Utah,” but we all know it’s the Mormons. It’s a pro-natalist culture, has BYU as a subsidized education and marriage driver, and a high-trust culture with a decent tech sector. They’ve done very well for themselves despite living in the middle of the desert, and much of it seems down to culture, which may be exportable.
7. NYC
Throwing a bone to the coastal elites, the New York/New Jersey metro appears to be actually good, and Delaware is contiguous and finance-y, so it is grouped in. They do better than competitor California, which is both a bit poorer and less fertile.1
The Stragglers:
New-Portlandia
The lowest-scoring states are Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine, and Oregon, with New Hampshire in 6th place. It’s basically non-BosWash New England plus Portland, which seems spiritually similar, and I will dub it New-Portlandia. Though the incomes are good, that vibe really isn’t good for having babies.
The Rustier Belt
The particularly hard-hit Rust Belt states of West Virginia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania underperform due to middling fertility rates combined with low incomes (plus fentanyl).
The Deeper South
Mississippi and South Carolina have slightly above average fertility, but that doesn’t make up for their especially low incomes. Most of the rest of the South doesn’t do especially better, including Florida, which I was surprised to find in the bottom half. I assume you are all now thinking of this Albion’s Seed book review.2
The Big Empty
Rounding out the bottom quarter, New Mexico, Montana, and Nevada really don’t seem to have much in common structurally, though they aesthetically belong together.
Honestly, I’m pretty surprised by the results and am now going to have to update a whole bunch of state stereotypes.
San Francisco is likely really rich and really infertile, but I’ll save that for a city-level analysis.
10% of people I meet have read that book review, but I have yet to meet a single one who has read the book. (No, I have not either).