The Future of Social Spending Revisited

A comment that I made in a previous post needs to be modified.  I stated that I would predict that social programs would be dismantled by the Supreme Court.  This is indeed where they are most likely to be repealed.  However, the post implied that this might take place due to a demographic shift as men tend to live longer in the future.  This will indeed result in men catching up with women in life expectancy and will likely result in an increase in the proportion of the adult population that is male, and a decrease in the female population that is single.  All of these will indeed result in a conservative shift in the electorate.

However, the magnitude of this change is likely to be mitigated by the fact that married women still tend to be more in favor of social programs than men.  I should also point out that married men tend to be more conservative as well.  In any case, this trend alone is unlikely to result in a political change extreme enough to get a president to nominate Supreme Court justices who would be likely to declare these programs unconstitutional.