well our men, in America have been and are doing the opposite - and for quite some time
Labor force participation among prime -age men peaked in 1954 and has fallen steadily since the mid -1960s, a trend that has been sharper in the United States than in other advanced economies.
Figuring out the reason for that decline is a hot topic in economics, with one researcher recently making waves by suggesting young men now find the idle hours of unemployment more tolerable thanks to video games.
That thesis has found some support from former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who expects working-age men to exit the workforce at an accelerating pace “as IT accelerates job destruction on the one hand, and developments such as virtual reality make non-work more attractive and addictive on the other.” By 2050, Summers speculates, a quarter of all prime-age American men will be totally out of work.
But it’s not just the temptations of video games that have men shunning the working life. They are also doing it for grimmer, less tech-friendly reasons, according to a new paper: many of them are in too much pain to be working.
Maynard Dixon/BYU Museum of Art
The Japanese people are very educated, that has been my experience here in California ... and this says American men .. not so much ...
Around half of the men in question are taking some kind of pain medication every day, according to a new paper by Alan Krueger, the former chief economic adviser to the Obama White House. Around a third of the prime age men out of the labor force say they have some kind of functional disability, and overall they are not living well: In the relatively bloodless language of economic research, surveys show they have “low levels of emotional well-being throughout their days and…derive relatively little meaning from their daily activities.”
The research paints a portrait of sadness, loneliness, and pain, and suggests their estrangement from working life has had dire consequences for their sense of wellbeing.
For those out of the workforce, about 30% of their time is spent in solitude, compared to 18% among employed prime age men. They are also “less happy, more sad, and more stressed than unemployed men, and the result is they “may have lowered their views of the best possible life they could expect.”
But much of this is concentrated among older men. For the young men who are not in the labor force, Krueger cites data showing they “seem remarkably content with their lives,” and that there is only “small and typically statistically insignificant differences” in how they feel throughout the day compared to those who are working.
Paul Cezanne / Via wikiart.org
then I ended up here - https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160620_cea_primeage_male_lfp.pdf and got fascinated by the executive summary, it says much! and then/now working on the introduction ... .. sheeesh!... ;) it most certainly lays waste to conservatives screeching about 'disability insurance' has caused it .. LOL...... not hardly ... two percent of our country is on disability ... a much bigger percent is NOT WORKING ...the disability theory just doesn't add up .. numbers are not there .. Have fun! .. ;) I did ... ;)
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