Is There a Recent Crisis in Men?

Modernity, not men.

The narrative of growing male underachievement started to pervade “the space” sometime around the COVID apocalypse, and has grown in fervor since then. Most of the discussion seems to focus on loneliness and sexlessness. Notably, the decline in close friends that has occured in the United States is larger in men than women.

from here

However, there doesn’t seem to be a sex difference in number of friends in the modern day - men are more likely to have no close friends, but they are also more likely to have ten or more.

As for the male sexlessness pandemic, it’s fake, and is the result of a spurious finding in the 2018 GSS. Subsequent GSS sampling years and other datasets suggest that this trend has not ocurred.

old data

new data, with subsequent years

from here, uses a larger sample than the GSS

There is also no evidence for a crisis that is unique to men when other variables are analyzed (see charts at the end of the article):

• Educational attainment: women have surpassed men in educational attainment in the United States. This appears to be true for most other developed countries.

• Income: Women’s incomes have increased while men’s have stagnated when adjusted for inflation in the last 50 years.

• Mental health: young women typically have worse mental health than young men. Recent cohorts of American teenagers appear to have suffered a decrease in overall mental health, and this is particularly true for girls.

• Suicide: young men commit suicide much more often than young women, though this has been true for a long time, and this difference may have decreased in magnitude in recent generations.

• Academic grades: Women tend to have slightly better grades than men (d = .23), no change over time.

• Masculinity/femininity: men appear to be getting less masculine, women less feminine, though the trend isn’t confirmed as the data is cross-sectional, so they could be age-effects instead of cohort effects. Make of this what you will.

• Happiness: got worse in both sexes within the United States, but the magnitude of the change appears to be larger in women.

• Mental illness: has gotten worse in both sexes by about the same amount (~1 standard deviation).

Overall, women’s economic status relative to men has increased, but psychologically they have lost ground, which contradicts the narrative of “growing male suffering”. Instead, what appears to be occurring is that recent generations are more psychologically unwell in general, and this decline may be even stronger in women.

____________

Review of trends by trait

____________

Educational Attainment

Men used to complete college more than women, but the trend has reversed:

I could disingenuously argue the rate at which men complete college has still risen, but because educational attainment is a signalling mechanism, this is an overall loss for men.

Within fields, the sex ratios have been pretty stable ever since the 70s.

from here

Trends from the world as a whole suggest that women attain more teritary education than men, particularly in the developed world.

Income

from here

Male incomes have stagnated, while female incomes have risen. This rise seems to be due to changes in women’s occupational status, years of experience, and/or educational attainment over time.

from here

Mental health

Young women typically have worse mental health than young men. Mental health appears to have worsened in both girls and boys, though the increase appears to be larger in women.

from here

from here

from here

from here

from here

Suicide within the youth

Young men commit more suicides than women, though this has been true for a long time, and the difference seems to have reduced.

from here

All of the subsequent charts come from Sean’s essay on social progress and well-being.

within women

within men

This trend of sex differences in completed suicide reducing does not generalize to all cohorts and countries, though. In France, the difference increased within young women and men, but in Western Germany (FRG; Federal Republic of Germany), the sex difference in suicidality was constant. Within the Germans, suicidality rose from the late 50s to late 70s, but dropped from the late 70s to the early 90s in both young women and men.

As for why I focus suicide in the youth regardless of cohort years, it is because I consider these suicides to be more salient. This is because younger people have greater chances of turning around their lives and escaping their ruts than the old - who’s problems are more likely to be persistent and incurable, especially if they relate to health.

Number of friends

from here

From what I see in the chart, the decline in the number of close friends people have is stronger in men, but men still have about the same number of friends that women have - they just vary more in the number.

Sexlessness

There is one chart that does suggest that the gap between sexless men and women has increased.

from here

from here

The larger NSFG suggest that sexlessness/virginity doesn’t differ much by sex, and is not increasing that much.

from here

from here

School grades

Female advantage, no change over time.

A female advantage in school marks is a common finding in education research, and it extends to most course subjects (e.g., language, math, science), unlike what is found on achievement tests. However, questions remain concerning the quantification of these gender differences and the identification of relevant moderator variables. The present meta-analysis answered these questions by examining studies that included an evaluation of gender differences in teacher-assigned school marks in elementary, junior/middle, or high school or at the university level (both undergraduate and graduate). The final analysis was based on 502 effect sizes drawn from 369 samples. A multilevel approach to meta-analysis was used to handle the presence of nonindependent effect sizes in the overall sample. This method was complemented with an examination of results in separate subject matters with a mixed-effects metaanalytic model. A small but significant female advantage (mean d 0.225, 95% CI [0.201, 0.249]) was demonstrated for the overall sample of effect sizes. Noteworthy findings were that the female advantage was largest for language courses (mean d 0.374, 95% CI [0.316, 0.432]) and smallest for math courses (mean d 0.069, 95% CI [0.014, 0.124]). Source of marks, nationality, racial composition of samples, and gender composition of samples were significant moderators of effect sizes. Finally, results showed that the magnitude of the female advantage was not affected by year of publication, thereby contradicting claims of a recent “boy crisis” in school achievement. The present meta-analysis demonstrated the presence of a stable female advantage in school marks while also identifying critical moderators. Implications for future educational and psychological research are discussed.

Masculinity/femininity

from here

People in all countries seem to be identifying as less “masculine” if they are men and “feminine” if they are women over time, particularly in Hajnal line countries. These could easily be age effects/artefacts of measurement invariance, but my anecdotal experiences suggest that this is a true finding.

Happiness

from here - changes in happiness (scaled -100 to 100) over time in both genders

Women’s happiness has linearly decreased ever since 1970, while men’s peaked in the 90s and tanked ever since. Looks like an L for both genders, but a larger L for women.

Mental Illness

from here

People have gotten more mentally abnormal by the equivalent of 1.5 standard deviations between 1940 and 2007. The size of the cohort effect appears to be the same in both sexes.

same study as above

This table suggests that men are getting less defensive (K scale), but women are getting more defensive. I think this is a typographic error as it is contradicted by another table, but I cannot be sure.

note that K is decreasing in both men and women, but the prior table suggests that men got less defensive, while women got more defensive.

One problem with this study may be that the reporting of mental illness may have changed over time, so the newer cohorts may report more mental illness, but not exhibit as much mental illness. Fortunately, this can be tested by observing if these trends hold for controlling for response bias that is detected in the test. This test measures a respondent’s tendency to tell White lies about themselves (L-scale) and portray themselves in a defensive light (K-scale). As shown in Tables 1 and 2 that I posted previously, these trends hold for when controlling for response bias, so this is probably not a concern.