
Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men [pdf] - gwern
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/maguiar/files/leisure-luxuries-labor-june-2017.pdf
======
MollyR
When I volunteered at a suicide prevention center, I dealt with a ton of
college grads who couldn't find jobs, and were depressed, suicidal and deep in
debt. They said they felt alone, and their parents just thought they were
lazy.

Maybe videogames are their only way to eke out some self-proclaimed happiness
being a hero in some fake reality. But that happiness will quickly fade as
they age, and they are forced to face reality in terms of resources needed for
survival.

I think this also explains the rise of the extremist youth groups antifa and
the alt-right. Both are dominated by young men looking for purpose and value.

edit: maybe also explains the rise of that jordan peterson guy.

~~~
verylittlemeat
Does anyone else see huge similarities between what this paper is describing
and the freeter/hikikomori/herbivore men trends going on in Japan since the
late 1980s?

I don't have the time or inclination to look into it more deeply but it almost
seems like the West is just living through a social reality that has been
going on for decades in Japan. Maybe there are some interesting social and
economic insights that can be gleaned from that change to predict the future
in the west.

~~~
toyg
I was saying this in the late ‘90s. I would get out the relevant posts but
they are in Italian anyway; I believe in Italy we saw the phenomenon a bit
earlier because of a number of factors (the economy braked earlier than
elsewhere, it’s a more traditionalist country than average, etc etc).

On the other hand, media and academia are always out to sensationalise. It’s
entirely possible that a certain degree of social disaffection has always been
there (see “young Werther”, Leopardi and so on), but the overall population
growth was such that a small but constant percentage of a community is now a
big number in absolute terms.

------
trs80
This paper is interesting but I don't think it really gets at the core of the
issue. It associates the decline of young men in the workforce with so-called
"leisure luxuries" such as video games. The paper even admits that, "For other
groups - younger women, older men and older women - recreational computer is
not a leisure luxury."

I would like to submit a complimentary hypothesis. While it may be true that
young males are more interested in video games, video games are not
necessarily the cause of the decline of younger males in the workforce.
Perhaps games are simply a tool of escapism, utilized by a demoralized section
of the population (young males). This could explain why young females are not
influenced as drastically by the same leisure luxury. As with anything, the
underlying reason behind young male decline in the work force could be a
variety of things (e.g. males have more interest in games compared to young
females or are more addiction prone to game than young females), but I believe
that the case for escapism in young males in a society which is increasingly
anti-male is a strong one to explain them seeking refuge in video games.

~~~
bilbo0s
"...This could explain why young females are not influenced as drastically by
the same leisure luxury..."

Or...

Maybe young women just don't like video games? Let's be honest here, most of
the "hobby" type video games that require dedicated time to be allocated to
them are not filled with content that women like to consume. I'd wager that
the male/female split in a game like CoD is nowhere near 50/50\. (Even though
many in the video game industry claim it to be.)

Add to that the fact that many young women likely wouldn't want to fire up
PUBG, CoD, or Fortnite and have obscenities hurled at them...

and it's pretty clear why women seem to be less interested in that content.

I think a more helpful strategy would be to attempt to discover why older MEN
seem to spend less time in these pursuits than younger men? This might shed
some light on characteristics specific to younger men that would explain why
they love these sorts of activities so much.

That answer might be a whole lot more pedestrian than we'd hope for. ie -
Younger men just have more time. (No kids). Or it could be truly novel, and
provide some great insights into human psychology. (But more probably, it's
somewhere in the middle.)

~~~
pjc50
Women are 52% of gamers, even if they don't like those particular genres and
_certainly_ don't like the nastier kind of competition:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-per...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/52-percent-
people-playing-games-women-industry-doesnt-know)

Older men vs younger men: cohort effect? if you're over 40-50ish you didn't
quite grow up with games.

~~~
CaptSpify
I'm speculating in a subject I don't know all that well, but....

Aren't women-focused games generally less long-term engaging than male-focused
games?

At least in my experience, the games that I perceive women generally want to
play are more "5 minutes here and there" type games vs "3 hours straight" type
games. So perhaps there are more women playing games, but they individually
spend less time doing it?

Does anyone have stats on this either way?

------
michaelbuckbee
In a time where millenials are deeply, structurally pushed down economically
[1] Video games make a lot of economic sense to play as they're an incredibly
inexpensive form of entertainment on a dollars per hour of entertainment
basis.

1 - [http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-
millenni...](http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/)

~~~
dnomad
It goes deeper than this but yes this is the right track.

The US is a wildly inequal society. Each year it becomes more and more inequal
and the latest tax cuts are going to dramatically accelerate the rising
inequality.

Such widespread inequality has powerful knock-on effects and these effects are
converging on these young (likely rural) males. Everything from suppressed
wages to supressed business formation to extraordinary economic rents
(housing, healthcare) all come together to produce more losers and less (but
richer) winners.

------
40acres
A propensity for video games is more a symptom than a cause imo.

If you look at the state of the modern American man, analyze trends and
extrapolate forwards things are not looking good. The ratio of men:women in
colleges is nearing 60/40\. We are moving to a more service based economy
which favors women. Lot's of folks are simply dropping out of the economy and
are trending towards being strains on society.

~~~
hkmurakami
I believe you must mean 40/60.

------
stillsut
There's this huge class of video games that feature: skill-building, leveling-
up, acquisition, and when networked, involve team dynamics, assessing other's
skill, leadership, earned respect, and a social hierarchy that's based on a
meritocracy. Have these type of games become incredibly good over the last ten
years? Yes. Have jobs / "the world" gotten less good at providing these
rewarding type of experiences? I'm not sure.

~~~
ArlenBales
A good example of this is the recently released game Monster Hunter: World. It
features everything you mentioned.

Some players have spent an undeniably unhealthy amount of time in that game in
just a few weeks. They boast "I'm High Rank 100 after only 200+ hours!" as if
playing a video game for 15+ hours a day was something to be accomplished and
proud of.

I feel sad for these individuals when they realize all that time was
meaningless.

~~~
nradov
Someone would literally have to _pay_ me to get me to play a game like that.
It's literally like work. Except for some volunteer activities I don't work
for free.

------
rubidium
Woah woah woah. I mean video games are a drop in the bucket of the
conversation here.

WHO actually has 60 hours a week of leisure between the ages of 31-55?! How is
that the average?

6am: wake. shower sometimes. 6:15am-7:45: take care of kids, eat breakfast,
get dressed. 7:45-5:45: commute and work. 6-7: eat dinner 7-7:30: kids to bed.
7:30-8: cleanup house 8-10: maybe leisure, often home production. 10: bed.

Weekends have _at most_ 6 hours of leisure per day.

That works out to 22 hours, best case scenario.

I asked around the office. No one else is getting 60 hours.

~~~
hnaccy
>Weekends have _at most_ 6 hours of leisure per day.

Why?

~~~
adventured
Mow the lawn, do laundry, clean the house, maybe maintenance on a vehicle with
a trip to the dealership or self-work, rake leaves, take the kids to sports
practice, run errands, pay bills, do taxes, deal with family problems, deal
with being sick or having a child that is sick, fix a broken sink, pick your
husband up at the airport an hour drive each way, fix the garage door motor
that has been acting up, help your son improve at math by working with him for
hours on it over the weekend, and approximately 807 other things that need to
get done at some point with weekends being ideal.

Simplify life? Oh, sure.

------
zitterbewegung
I think that younger men are going into video games because computers have
made us so productive that we don’t need as much as a labor supply anymore. We
have seen a drop of labor participation for men since the 60s which is
invariant under any economic conditions .

People forget that to disrupt an industry someone loses and it appears we can
see some of this in the male labor participation rate .

Since women have unfortunately had restrictions on their ability to be
employed that information could have been lost.

~~~
ficustree
That is very much addressed in the content of this paper. from the
introduction

> An obvious candidate for this decline in younger men’s hours is a decline in
> demand for their labor, resulting in a corresponding reduction in their real
> wages. There is evidence that declining demand for manufacturing and routine
> employment has contributed to a secular decline in wages and employment
> rates for less educated workers.2 However, we show in the next section that
> real wages of younger men have closely tracked those of their older
> counterparts since 2000. This suggests that the greater decline in younger
> men’s hours is not readily explained by a differential decline in labor
> demand for younger versus older men.

------
brad0
I’ve been noticing a number of similar articles on HN recently. Exploring why
men aren’t interested in working seems to be in vogue.

~~~
hi-im-mi-ih
I'll venture a guess: We've been talking about rights for so long, as a
nation, that we forgot to discuss responsibility.

The major media and political narratives are focusing on the rights of women,
the rights of trans folks, the rights of minorities, and the rights of
immigrants. They are all well and good, but we should equally talk about the
responsibility of our well-represented young white males to bear up under some
responsibility and push themselves to improve their country. Responsibility to
provide and protect is a very masculine idea, and if we fed ourselves an equal
diet of responsibility as we do rights & freedoms, the young men of today
might be a lot more energetic and engaged.

I also venture that it has something to do with the sharp rise in atheism.
Christianity espouses responsibility. Carry your cross and accept suffering
without malice. Atheism says that the world is meaningless, we were created
from entropy. One of those belief systems might work better for getting young
guys out of the house!

~~~
mitchty
> I also venture that it has something to do with the sharp rise in atheism.
> Christianity espouses responsibility. Carry your cross and accept suffering
> without malice. Atheism says that the world is meaningless, we were created
> from entropy. One of those belief systems might work better for getting
> young guys out of the house!

Build up atheist straw men much? You know what you know if I tell you I am an
atheist? You only know I lack belief in deities (likely yours, whatever they
may be, but no different than another deist in that they lack believe in all
the other dieties as you, but they believe in N that you don't). Thats it, it
doesn't tell you anything about what I find meaningless or meaningful, or that
we believe we were created from entropy. That is pure projection on your part,
and entirely without merit.

~~~
hi-im-mi-ih
Sure it has merit to say that, generally speaking, Christianity espouses
responsibility and atheism does not. Where are the tracts of Atheist values
and dogma that carry a deep message of responsibility? Point me to _any_
symbolic representation of central atheist values - There is nothing. To be
atheist is to be not associated with any belief system, and without any
coherence among atheists, I can't say anything about atheists in general, but
I certainly cannot say that they all think the world has a deep meaning that
they're directly involved in.

So basically you're saying that as an atheist I have no idea what you're up
to... Right, because you're not up to _anything_ that other atheists are up
to. You're a heterogeneous mix of feelings and ideas that are mostly based in
Western values but are held together loosely. I can look at a devout Christian
and know that he's guided by his faith to taking up hard tasks and completing
them diligently as part of his commitment to his faith.

~~~
mitchty
> Sure it has merit to say that, generally speaking, Christianity espouses
> responsibility and atheism does not.

How can a lack of belief espouse anything? Atheism isn't a religion. The rest
of your post seems to lack that fundamental understanding.

> I certainly cannot say that they all think the world has a deep meaning that
> they're directly involved in.

You also can't claim the converse, as noted atheism is a lack in belief
systems, not a belief system unto itself. You're attacking straw men versions
of atheists. Its like asking how many amps a battery has, or how many miles of
work you can get from a gallon of gas. Without context the statements make no
coherent sense.

~~~
hi-im-mi-ih
I know you don't understand me but I'm basically saying that there is a
religion that espouses responsibility, that has ancient relevance to the human
race.

Then there is atheism which basically means follow nothing, do what you wish,
which might mean that you're a great person nonetheless.

~~~
mitchty
Atheism is a category. Aka those without diety is the literal definition.

Just as it would be wrong of me to say "All deists believe in the same god,
that is why they don't take belief in different dieties seriously", its wrong
to attach belief in responsibiliity to a category like atheism.

An example of the disparate groups that qualify as atheists: \- Antitheists \-
Nihilists \- Some Agnostics \- Some Buddhists \- Some Stoics

Etc....

How you arrive at "atheism which basically means follow nothing" being
attached to a category is beyond my ability to understand.

------
irrational
> "We calculate that innovations to gaming/recreational computing since 2004
> explain on the order of half the increase in leisure for younger men."

And the other half is explained by the ready availability of free porn.

------
dropit_sphere
Interesting. What effects might result from young men spending less time
working?

~~~
eric_b
They have less income to spend. This has mostly negative consequences. Lower
economic stimulation is the most obvious. Of course, less income means other
things too. Young men are living at home with their parents for longer, or in
flophouse conditions. At least in the US, this is not a desirable quality to
most females, meaning they are getting married later if at all. This means
less children, which could mean a demographic crisis depending on which camp
you believe. Also these people could be an eventual drain on society as they
get older or retire.

~~~
watwut
Then again, depending on whether men worked too much or too little before, it
could mean better work life balance. Unless you believe the proper amount of
time to work is "all the time", there will be a point where people work a bit
less and it is not end of world.

------
conwy
If only everyone had the luxury of time. Universal basic income FTW.

~~~
eric_b
Someone still has to plant, grow and harvest the crops to make the food you
eat. Someone still has to ensure the sewers work, the garbage is picked up
etc. Most necessary jobs will not be done by robots for decades if ever. And
they certainly wouldn't be done by humans for "funzies" until then.

In a fantasy world of perfect human virtue perhaps basic income will work, or
maybe once Skynet becomes self aware. But it's a pipe dream on any kind of
meaningful scale.

~~~
Frondo
We could still pay people to do those jobs. We just might have to pay more for
less desirable jobs, instead of what we seem to have now--the worst jobs are
also the worst paid.

------
verylittlemeat
Hand wringing about perceived weak virtues of the youth. I expect an article
referencing this in the new york times style section within the week.

~~~
merpnderp
Presented with data that youth today are falling behind in traditional markers
for success, and you're response is mockery?

These are young adults who are not accomplishing anything with their time and
will have little to show for their time when older. This is a serious social
illness worthy of study.

~~~
verylittlemeat
It's interesting to note which social science papers hacker news decides to
treat with reverence vs skepticism.

It's not a coincidence that a website which treats economic success as the
apex cultural trait would cling to a study that validates their own feelings.

The startup narrative is a nasty one. If you don't see the economic results
you expected it's easy to look outward and try to rationalize why video game
playing losers seem to be content or indifferent while you struggle to solve
the Big Problems only to be met with mediocre success.

The lack of introspection and wholesale othering that leads to completely
subjective statements such as: people who play video games are "not
accomplishing anything with their time" and they "will have little to show for
their time when their older" \- are worse than depressing, they're the seeds
of resentment, anger and aggression. Ironically it's this irrational hatred
that's a social illness worthy of study.

~~~
merpnderp
I think you missed your mark by some ways. There's a mountain of options in
between toiling away 80 hours a week on a startup and living in your parent's
basement playing video games. Economic success is the measure of how people
are able to provide for themselves and those they care about. Families cost
money, houses cost money, living costs money. Someone has to provide the
things people consume to live, and they don't want to be slaves to a basement
dwelling slacker. If they want to do anything with their lives, and we all do
if we want to have good mental health, they'll find a career, be it in
startups or working their way up at the local supermarket.

~~~
verylittlemeat
The startup is a representation of social virtue, not just working but doing
it independently and in service of personal goals. It's something people on
this site deeply value. Work for people here _is who you are_. They don't get
that's not true for everyone else. Worse than that, they want to pretend
that's not true and prescribe a solution.

In regards to the rest of your comment: Do these economic dropouts want
families? Do they want houses? What exactly are their lifestyle expectations
and why exactly are they wrong?

The projection of deeply _personal_ values not just in your comment but in
this thread are breathtaking. The inability to see that just because _you_
want something must mean that that's true for other human beings is
disturbingly common here.

Why are people so concerned and threatened by people they consider to be
losers? That's not a rhetorical question. Are you afraid these people are
going to ruin your lifestyle by doing.....nothing? If they're happy and they
have close to zero impact on your life why exactly are they scapegoats for so
much wrong in the world? And before you say "well they're not happy", many of
the examples of unhappy "basement dwellers" in this thread are described as
people close to suicidal because they want to live one way but society says
their expectations should be another. It's all such a big mess and I really
feel for these kids calling into suicide hotlines over thinking they're
failures by some bullshit external standard.

------
walshemj
Not sure I buy a xbone one as a leisure luxury playing polo, skiing or a
season ticket to Man U id agree.

------
calebsurfs
My observation is that teens are taking jobs that were previously done by
undocumented immigrants who have left due to the current political climate. I
expect immigration policy could be more closely correlated with young men's
labor than video games.

~~~
adventured
Well let's get right to the facts.

Fact: the US is not losing undocumented / illegal immigrants at an abnormally
high rate. That's a myth. Trump has hardly moved the needle at all when it
comes to illegal immigration. Everything to the contrary is propaganda pushed
by the media for pathetic political points / ratings.

Obama deported more people in an average year than Trump has in his first
year. He was known in immigration circles as the deporter in chief for it.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-
num...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-
numbers/story?id=41715661)

"Illegal immigration on border surges back to Obama levels"

[https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/15/illegal-
imm...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/15/illegal-immigration-
border-back-obama-levels/)

~~~
calebsurfs
Those are relevant facts but they leave out immigrants who are leaving
voluntarily. I couldn't find anything within the last 6 months but there was
recently a net outflow of undocumented immigrants [0]

[http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/apr/26/r...](http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/apr/26/ron-
kind/yes-experiencing-net-outflow-illegal-undocumented-/)

------
and0
Someone linked me to this roughly a year ago, and it seemed like the most
obvious example of correlation != causation. I'm not sure how it got
published, really.

~~~
watwut
This article is from July 2017. It did not existed a year ago.

~~~
glitch
Here's an older version dated September 15, 2016 (which is 1 year, 5 months
ago):

[https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~nwilliam/Econ702_files/abch.pdf](https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~nwilliam/Econ702_files/abch.pdf)

------
OliverJones
Uh-oh. This is the kind of thing the popular fakenuz press reads,
misunderstands, and turns into bogus headlines like "All millenials are
slackers."

~~~
brad0
I don’t think that it’s that they misunderstand.

I think that it’s because they make more money by making it divisive and
emotion driven.

------
georgeecollins
This is pointing out that young men are spending more time on the computer,
particularly playing games. Obviously because online games have gotten much
better in the last 15 years. If people choose to spend more time doing a thing
because it is more compelling that is not bad.

~~~
croshan
I wouldn't assume that was the only cause. It could be that online games are
more addicting (they are), or maybe that they're using it as a tool to cope
with depression (I definitely know people that do).

Just because people choose to spend more time drinking, doesn't mean it's not
bad. They could just be turning into alcoholics.

~~~
dweekly
The narrative of coping with depression by playing video games seems
reasonable but the data in the paper seem to show that there was an uptick in
self-reported happiness in the segment playing the most games. That seemed to
read to me as, crudely, "games make you happy and lazy" (namely they lower
workforce participation). Happy to hear of a better way to read the data.

