We’re just finishing up a new episode of the Freakonomics Radio podcast, which will likely be released tomorrow. It asks a simple speculative question: what would the world look like if economists were in charge?
One point of the episode is that economists — academic economists in particular — are generally free from the political and moral boundaries that restrict most people, and are therefore able to offer analysis or recommendations that politicians, e.g., wouldn’t go near with a ten-foot pole.
That point came to mind this morning as I was looking over a recent working paper by Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Jeremy Greenwood, and Nezih Guner. It’s called “From Shame to Game in One Hundred Years: An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and its De-Stigmatization” (summary here; PDF here).
From the abstract:
Societies socialize children about many things, including sex. Socialization is costly. It uses scarce resources, such as time and effort. Parents weigh the marginal gains from socialization against its costs. Those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale indoctrinate their daughters less than others about the perils of premarital sex, because the latter will lose less from an out-of-wedlock birth. Modern contraceptives have profoundly affected the calculus for instilling sexual mores, leading to a de-stigmatization of sex. As contraception has become more effective there is less need for parents, churches and states to inculcate sexual mores. Technology affects culture.
There is something worth unpacking in just about every sentence there. Also worth reading is the authors’ take, empirical and otherwise, on the sexual revolution:
In 1900, only 6% of U.S. women would have engaged in premarital sex by age 19. Now, 75% have experienced this. Public acceptance of this practice reacted with delay. Only 15% of women in 1968 had a permissive attitude toward premarital sex. At the time, though, about 40% of 19-year-old females had experienced it. The number with a permissive attitude had jumped to 45% by 1983, a time when 73% of 19-year-olds were sexually experienced. Thus, societal attitudes lagged practice. Beyond the evolution and acceptance of sexual behavior over time, there are relevant cross-sectional differences across females. In the U.S., the odds of a girl having premarital sex decline with [Ed.: increased] family income. So, for instance, in the bottom decile, 70% of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 have experienced it, versus 47% in the top one. Similarly, 68% of adolescent girls whose family income lies in the upper quartile would feel “very upset” if they got pregnant, versus 46% of those whose family income is in the lower quartile.
In SuperFreakonomics, we relate a parallel statistic concerning men and the sexual revolution:
At least 20 percent of American men born between 1933 and 1942 had their first sexual intercourse with a prostitute. Now imagine that same young man twenty years later. The shift in sexual mores has given him a much greater supply of unpaid sex. In his generation, only 5 percent of men lose their virginity to a prostitute.
Are we starting to understand why the U.S. doesn’t elect more economists to high office?
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I understand that sex is somewhat important, but it is a small aspect of human life. Why are we so preoccupied with what people do in their bedrooms? The stuff that is happening is not new. These thing have been going on since before Christ. We are so moralistic when it comes to other people it’s ridiculous. Sex shouldn’t be stigmatized because it’s what people do and enjoy. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. All I care about is putting away the perverts, and those who choose to be sexually active should ALWAYS protect themselves. And as far as the statistics go, interpret them how you want. They will never be accurate because of double standards and other economic factors to consider.
You’ve provided an artifical step-ladder for those ready to make a relative value judgement by basing your statistics off the 19yo female virgin in the year 1900.
What might the percentage have been in say, 32 a.d. ?? Or pretty much any point prior to the high-water mark of the Victorian era?
It seems that perhaps we should consider electing economists to high office, because they reliably tell the ugly truth.
“generally free from the political and moral boundaries that restrict most people”
Now amorality is something to *brag* about?
A great quote in the paper: “Over time the odds of becoming pregnant (the failure rate) from premarital sex have declined, due to the facts that contraception has improved, and more teens are using some method.”
I vote pregnant teens should receive a t-shirt: “I failed at premarital sex”
@ Gues: I don’t think that being free from the usual moral boundaries necessarily mean that someone is amoral. Perhaps Dubner is (rightfully) assuming that most people are way too moralizing for their own good.
“Are we starting to understand why the U.S. doesn’t elect more economists to high office?”
Not really. Other than as punishment for making sex boring.
I suspect the real reason is offered by the words of Harry Truman in seach of a one-armed economist so that he could not say “but on the other hand…”
The Dismal Science may be popular as Freakonomics, but it is not how most people to want to have their lives externally governed. We have computers to do that.
So with the point being economists “are therefore able to offer analysis or recommendations that politicians, e.g., wouldn’t go near with a ten-foot pole”
What are the policy recomendations from this analysis?