Single men responsible for little but trouble

IT IS single men, not lone mothers, we should be worrying about. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are wrong to think welfare reforms should be targeted on the growing numbers of mothers bringing up their children alone, according to newly- published research.

There has been a dramatic decline in the proportion of young men either married or co-habiting and living with children. This has been paralleled by soaring crime rates, drug and alcohol abuse and numbers of prisoners.

In a paper in the latest issue of The Economic Journal, George Akerlof, an eminent economist at Berkeley in California, provides evidence that neither over-generous welfare nor unemployment - the classic right-wing and left-wing explanations, respectively, for social ills - can explain these problems.

Rather, he argues, their source is the unwillingness of young men to settle down and get married. Their lack of responsibilities allows them to carry on misbehaving well beyond their teens in an escalating spiral of violence.

But they inflict harm upon themselves as well as society more generally. The figures show that married men earn more, are less likely to be unemployed, are less often the victims or perpetrators of crimes, have fewer accidents and are less likely to die of a wide range of diseases than their unmarried peer group. The reason seems to be, quite simply, having a woman to look after them better than they would themselves.

According to the US figures on which the research is based, between 1968 and 1993 the fraction of men aged 25 to 34 who stayed single climbed from a third to three-fifths. For this growing group of men, Professor Akerlof writes: "The indiscretions, and worse, of the past will become the forerunners of greater misdeeds." And the problem escalates with each successive generation of youths, going one step further than their older role models.

The men who never marry are seven times more likely to end up in prison and four times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime. They are also more than twice as likely to be involved in an accident, including car accidents.

The single men's prospects are dimmer in other ways, especially in the jobs market.

For example, every year of marriage adds up to 0.9 per cent to wages. Although this premium might have declined during the 1990s, ten years of marriage on average mean a level of wages up to a fifth higher than that earned by a comparable single man.

The paper suggests that the explanation might be the fact that married men are more likely to have a woman taking care of their domestic needs, leaving them with more free time and less hassle.

Professor Akerlof concludes that the policy of cutting benefits for lone mothers to encourage them to work is misguided. This has gone much further in the US, where welfare benefits have fallen by more than half in real terms in the past 25 years.

He writes: "I take a view so old that it is new - welfare mothers are poor and unfortunate and therefore deserving of decent support."

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