Why men keep dropping out of the labor force: It starts in childhood, when kids see how males around them struggle, economists say

The male labor force participation rate in the U.S. has been falling for generations, perplexing economists who have struggled to come up with an explanation. According to the Labor Department’s latest data, the rate for men 20 years and older was 69.5% in May, down from 76% in May 2006. That means fewer men were employed or unemployed but actively looking for a job. The male participation rate peaked at 86.4% in 1950, but slid to 79.7% in 1970, and 76.4% in 1990. By contrast, female participation rose steadily until the 1990s, peaked in 2000, and has dipped only slightly since then. Numerous theories have been thrown around to try shedding light on the more recent declines among males. After the housing bubble popped and triggered the Great Recession, for example, the sudden loss of construction jobs was partly blamed for men dropping out of the work force. The introduction of more advanced video games since the early 2000s has even been cited as a cause for men working fewer hours. Meredith Whitney, the one-time “Oracle of Wall Street” who predicted the Great Financial Crisis, previously told Fortune that young single men living at home and playing video games are behind a “crisis of the American male.” Last year, the San Francisco Fed took a crack at it, saying men were both pulled out of the labor force because of schooling or caretaking duties and pushed out due to a mismatch in skills or a disability. Now a new paper from University of Connecticut economists Remy Levin and Daniela Vidart has added to the debate, arguing that men’s beliefs about the benefits of work are shaped by the labor market conditions they observed over their lifetimes, particularly during childhood. When young males grow up seeing weak wages and high unemployment among the men around them, they form pessimistic expectations about their own prospects later in life, making them less likely to participate in the labor force, the economists explained. “Our findings suggest