Links, 2-20-12

3 of the 4 candidates have declined to participate in March 1st debate CNN is sponsoring in Atlanta, which means that the debate next Wednesday in Arizona could be the last debate of the primary season

Here's an interesting piece on various attempts to quantify the conservative-ness of the Republican candidates.  Santorum is rated more moderately on economic issues and more conservatively on social issues than Romney.  Correspondingly, newspapers mention social issues in conjunction with Santorum's name far more often than they do with Romney's name (and vice-versa with economic issues).  The keywords most frequently used in conjunction with Santorum's name are sex/sexuality, gay rights/gay marriage/same-sex marriage, and birth control/contraception.  Meanwhile, tax/taxes, stimulus, and wealth/wealthy/rich are most frequently used in articles discussing Romney.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat follows the trend by pointing out that Santorum thinks contraception should be legal but that both he and liberals agree that abortions should be minimized, writing that "both Democrats and Republicans generally agree that the country would be better off with fewer pregnant teenagers, fewer unwanted children, fewer absent fathers, fewer out-of-wedlock births"

Where cultural liberals and social conservatives differ is on the means that will achieve these ends. The liberal vision tends to emphasize access to contraception as the surest path to stable families, wanted children and low abortion rates. The more direct control that women have over when and whether sex makes babies, liberals argue, the less likely they’ll be to get pregnant at the wrong time and with the wrong partner — and the less likely they’ll be to even consider having an abortion. (Slate’s Will Saletan has memorably termed this “the pro-life case for Planned Parenthood.”)
The conservative narrative, by contrast, argues that it’s more important to promote chastity, monogamy and fidelity than to worry about whether there’s a prophylactic in every bedroom drawer or bathroom cabinet. To the extent that contraceptive use has a significant role in the conservative vision (and obviously there’s some Catholic-Protestant disagreement), it’s in the context of already stable, already committed relationships. Monogamy, not chemicals or latex, is the main line of defense against unwanted pregnancies. 

He continues to argue that the problem with the Conservative vision is that "a successful chastity-centric culture seems to depned on a level of social cohesion, religious intensity shared values that exists only in small pockets of the country" and that the problem with the Liberal vision is that "more condoms, fewer abortions" is not playing out in reality -- that more liberal states sometimes have lower teen birth rates only because they have higher rates of abortion among teens.

The Economist asks how much of the declining crime rate is due to the growing prison population

A new study finds that people grow more tolerant as they grow older

Paul Krugman takes Mitt Romney to task for calling himself "severely conservative," writing that "severely" is usually used to describe a disease (a linguistics prof. at Penn says "severely" is most frequently coupled with disabled, depressed, ill, limited, and injured) and asks if Romney and others have "Severe Conservative Syndrome".

today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure.

Congress will pay for the extension in the payroll tax by auctioning off public airwaves currently used for TV broadcasts to wireless carriers

Here's a chart comparing organ donation rates around the world

This is only sort of related to public policy, but interesting nonetheless -- here are two charts breaking down what men and women want in a partner and how that's changed in the past 70 years.

The majority of babies born to women under 30 are now born out of wedlock, though the stats differ greatly by race and SES: "About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less"

And to round out the trio of articles on marriage and child-rearing here's a piece on how to develop self-control in your child in which the authors say recent books extolling the virtues of Chinese and French-style parenting aren't the only way.

Effective approaches for building self-control combine fun with progressively increasing challenges. Rather than force activities onto an unwilling child, take advantage of his or her individual tendencies. When children develop self-control through their own pursuit of happiness, no parental hovering is required. Find something that the child is crazy about but that requires active effort. Whether it’s compiling baseball statistics or making (but not passively watching) YouTube videos, passionate hobbies build mental staying power that can also be used for math homework.