EUROPE AND THE U.S.: Michael Sierk
[Michael Sierk is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia.]
Michael Sellitto says that Scandinavia has lower infant mortality rate than the US, longer average lifespan than the US, fewer abortions per capita, and a higher literacy rate. Does he not think that the fact that the U.S. has a ethnically diverse population of 300 million spread across a whole continent, while Scandinavia has an ethnically and culturally homogenous population of ~25 million spread over a fairly narrow geographic area has any relevance to those statistics? How about the fact that Scandinavia has a huge welfare state that is neither sustainable over the long run nor politically feasible in the U.S. (regardless of whether he wants it to be or not)? Or the fact that the Scandinavian birth rate is below replacement level, and it has low rates of immigration, while the U.S. birth rate is at replacement levels (albeit pulled up by Hispanics), and it has a history of absorbing large numbers of immigrants? I don't think many people argue that the Scandinavians have an enviable lifestyle in many ways--the questions are whether that lifestyle is sustainable, and whether there are tradeoffs to it. One of the key points opponents of SSM marriage make is that similar trends in marriage/cohabitation are likely to have very different sociological effects in Scandinavia and the U.S. The extensive welfare states, ethnic and cultural homogeneity, and low levels of immigration all mitigate the effects of increased parental cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births.
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