Minority Report

Via Marginal Revolution, Economists Decode Rational Behaviors of Black Women. The article summarizes the recent work of economists Tim Harford (the Undercover Economist), Kerwin Kofi Charles and A. Scott Cunningham on African-American marriage markets and related social consequences. It is a well established fact that African-Americans have experienced a disintegration of the family unit and alarmingly high rates of non-marital births (70%). I've always been interested in this topic, and to many conservatives it would seem to serve as a moral bellwether for society in general. The beginning of this article suggests the root cause is not a moral one:

For policy makers and society in general, who are indoctrinated to believe Black out-of-wedlock births, low marriage rates and single-parent households with all the attendant social ills are a result of a lack of morals entrenched in Black culture, Harford has given a logical explanation: "Marriage markets" where there are large numbers of Black men in prison significantly reduce the lifetime chances of marriage among Black women.

The issue is certainly not new. I did some background reading and found that it had been studied as early as 1965, when sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action". The subject was racially controversial even then. Moynihan went on to become a prominent and respected Democratic Senator. In the past four decades, academics have pondered a number of theories about the destructive shift in African-American family structure:

• women entering the workforce, allowing greater independence
  
• declining work opportunities for African-American males
• expanded welfare programs offering alternative support
• the sexual revolution

Today there is no consensus on any of these theories or their moral implications. The newest thesis advanced by Harford and Cunningham, that the soaring number of incarcerated black men plays a key role, suggests that there is a moral component:

Harford posits Black men who see the competition behind bars have no incentive to marry. The sex imbalance caused by imprisonment allows Black men who are not in jail to enjoy themselves sexually without getting married.

Cunningham explores "the relative shortage of men in Black communities, created largely by the high rates of Black male incarceration." Cunningham hypothesizes "that these high 'sex ratios' allows for men with tastes for sexual diversity to form concurrent partnerships, as well as affects on their condom use.

The rate of imprisonment causes scarcity of marriageable males, which tilts bargaining power heavily in favor of the remaining pool of men, encouraging promiscuity and other risky sexual behavior, which raises STD rates and non-marital births. After reading this, my thought was to ask if there are other subpopulations where this behavior has been observed? One that immediately came to mind were the post-WWII populations in Germany and Japan. Surely they had lost significant percentages of men in their prime. Did cultural or moral restrictions change the outcome, or were they not analogous in some other way?