Shakespeare's view on the matters

We are working on health risk behaviours in young adults. I like the quote below from A Winter's Tale

"I would there would be no age between sixteen and twenty three, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting". From Winter's Tale - cited in the Akerlof paper

The Akerlof paper "Men without Children" is a complex argument on the effects of decreasing marriage rates. Howard Parker has talked a lot about "prolonged adolescence" and there is similarities to what Akerlof is saying. Of particular importance, he stressed the role of shot-gun weddings in the past having an influence on breaking up male peer-groups that engaged in violent or health damaging behaviour. Nowadays, if a young man gets a young woman pregnant, either they know each other so poorly that getting married is not sensible, or the man feels less responsibilty because the woman can choose abortion if she wants. Thus, we see a rise in young men who have had kids but play no role in their lives and maintain their peer-group, most of whom are in the same position. On the other hand, there are also plenty of people who use the fact that they have no children to devote extra time to their career, potentially further enhancing inequality effects.

Some of the above seems better fitted to the US, but we are puzzling in here to find out why drinking has exploded so much among young adults and that young men in particular have seen escalating rates of many types of health damaging behaviours. Rising incomes and technological advances in the supply and distribution of alcohol and drugs have to be seen as part of the story. But the role of marriage and home ownership are poorly understood and garbled by ideological arguments. Akerlof presents lots of econometric results from the NLSY to the effect that married men do less damage to themselves and others even when modelled using panel though the results are not conclusive.

A potential mechanism for the effects of marriage that Akerlof introduces is Laibson's cue-theory of consumption. Marriage and children offer so many cues to act responsibly that behavioural change is inevitable. Though Akerlof himself chooses to talk about marriage being the adoption of a new identity and essentially the choosing of a new utility function. This is a brilliant way of thinking about home ownership in Ireland. Buying a house is essentially the purchase of a utility function with all sorts of positive features. What other initiation rituals exist in a place like Ireland? Have they been eroded and was this a bad thing?

Running through a lot of Akerlof's papers including the presidential address is the problem of the endogeneity of social customs. Where do they come from and how do they change? That's one for another time!