Freakologic: Making Life Logical

After a stunning success with The Undercover Economist, British economist Tim Harford is out with a new book, The Logic of Life. It’s all about the logical choices that people make in their lives.  For instance, how would you think that women react when a lot of men are in prison?

The more men are in prison, the more likely women are to get themselves a job, and the more likely they are to go to college.

In New Mexico, according to Harford, 30 percent of young black men are in jail.  So that means that young black women are very unlikely to marry. 

Of course, it works both ways.  The men that don’t go to jail find that there are lots of women available, so they are less inclined to get married.  Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

And so it goes, according to Harford.  What about the rise in divorce?  Can you explain that logically? 

Well, a century ago, looking after a family was so time consuming that a radical division of labor in the home was essential.  But once modern labor-saving devices came along, the importance of the domestic division of labor declined.  The cost of divorce went down.  So more people got divorced.  And when the supply of divorced people increased the cost of finding a suitable new mate went down too.

When the cost of divorce went down, more women could afford to pay the cost of getting out of an abusive relationship.  That had an effect on men.

The result? Domestic violence fell by almost a third, and the number of women murdered by their partners fell by ten percent. Female suicide also fell.

Obviously, that’s not the whole story.  And maybe the decline of divorce in recent years is a sign that people are learning to be more careful about getting married and better behaved once they commit.

But it’s interesting to think that the left-wing agenda of destroying the family was actually helped by the conservative reaction to high crime rates.  With lots of men in jail, lower-class women responded by avoiding marriage completely.

And the ready availability of government assistance made the choice less expensive.

It’s something to think about in the years ahead as conservatives journey in the wilderness of the Clinton-Obama administration.