When Both Men and Women Drop Out of the Labor Force, Why Do Economists Only Ask About Men?

That’s what New York Times readers were wondering when they saw Harvard Economics Professor Greg Mankiw’s column, “Why Aren’t Men Working?” The piece notes the falloff in labor force participation among prime age men (ages 25 to 54) for the last 70 years and throws out a few possible explanations.

We’ll get to the explanations in a moment, but the biggest problem with explaining the drop in labor force participation among men as a problem with men is that since 2000, there has been a drop in...