UNCOMMON SENSE

ECONOMIC INSIGHTS, FROM MARRIAGE TO TERRORISMBy GARY S. BECKER RICHARD A. POSNER

The University Of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2009 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-04101-8

Contents

Introduction to the Becker-Posner Blog…………………………………..11 The Sexual Revolution………………………………………………..112 Gay Marriage………………………………………………………..173 Polygamy……………………………………………………………254 Sex Selection……………………………………………………….315 Immigration Reform…………………………………………………..376 Putin’s Population Plan………………………………………………43Afterthoughts to Part I………………………………………………..497 Kelo and Eminent Domain………………………………………………538 Pharmaceutical Patents……………………………………………….599 Grokster, File Sharing, and Contributory Infringement……………………6510 Orphan Drugs, Intellectual Property, and Social Welfare…………………7311 Organ Sales………………………………………………………..7912 Traffic Congestion………………………………………………….8513 Privatizing Highways………………………………………………..91Afterthoughts to Part II……………………………………………….9714 Plagiarism…………………………………………………………10315 Tenure…………………………………………………………….10916 For-Profit Colleges…………………………………………………11717 Ranking Higher Education…………………………………………….123Afterthoughts to Part III………………………………………………12918 Fat Tax……………………………………………………………13319 Trans Fats Ban……………………………………………………..13920 Libertarian Paternalism……………………………………………..14721 Chicago and Big Boxes……………………………………………….153Afterthoughts to Part IV……………………………………………….15922 Judicial Term Limits………………………………………………..16523 Economics of the Revolving Door………………………………………17124 CEO Compensation……………………………………………………17725 Income Inequality…………………………………………………..18526 Corporate Social Responsibility………………………………………191Afterthoughts to Part V………………………………………………..19727 Tsunami……………………………………………………………20328 Major Disasters…………………………………………………….21129 Federalism, Economics, and Katrina……………………………………21930 Post- Catastrophe Price Gouging………………………………………22531 Global Warming and Discount Rates…………………………………….23132 Efficient Water Conservation…………………………………………239Afterthoughts to Part VI……………………………………………….24533 Capital Punishment………………………………………………….25134 Doping Athletes…………………………………………………….26335 Drunk Driving………………………………………………………26936 Internet Gambling…………………………………………………..27537 Preventive War……………………………………………………..28138 Ethnic Profiling……………………………………………………28539 Privatizing Security………………………………………………..29140 Antiterrorism Allocations……………………………………………29741 Collective Punishment……………………………………………….303Afterthoughts to Part VII………………………………………………30942 Economic and Political Freedom……………………………………….31543 Size of Countries…………………………………………………..32144 Hamas, Palestine, and Democracy………………………………………32745 Google in China…………………………………………………….33346 Economics of National Culture………………………………………..33947 Microfinance and Development…………………………………………34748 World Inequality……………………………………………………35349 Foreign Aid………………………………………………………..359Afterthoughts to Part VIII……………………………………………..365Index………………………………………………………………..367

Chapter One

SEX AND POPULATION April 10, 2005

THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION—POSNER

The death of Pope John Paul II on April 2, 2005, is a reminder of the profound changes in sexual mores over the past half century in the United States and many other countries, of the pope’s strong defense of conventional Roman Catholic sexual morality (including opposition to abortion, contraception, married priests, and all nonmarital sexual activity, including homosexual sex and even masturbation), and of the growing gulf between that morality and the actual sexual behavior of Roman Catholics in the United States (which is, on average, similar to that of other segments of the community), including the recent sex scandals involving the priesthood.

Let us consider first why sexual morality has changed so much over the past half century. If one takes an economic approach to the question, then since the benefits of sex in the sense of the pleasure or relief of tension that it yields have deep biological roots, it is probably to the cost side that we should look for an answer. The costs of engaging in sexual activity have fallen dramatically over the last half century (AIDS notwithstanding), for many reasons. One was the discovery that penicillin is a safe, certain, and inexpensive cure for syphilis. Another was improvements in contraceptive technology that have greatly reduced the likelihood of an unwanted birth (with minimal interference with sexual pleasure). It is true that the number of unwanted births has risen, but this is because other factors influence that number besides contraceptive technology. And to the extent that improved contraceptive technology induces more sexual activity by making sex safer, the number of unwanted births will not fall by the full percentage reduction in the probability of such a birth; the reduced probability per sexual act is somewhat offset by an increase in the number of acts. Legalizing abortion has further reduced the risk of an unwanted birth, although legalization can be viewed as a response to, rather than a cause of, a change in sexual mores or more plausibly as both.

Of fundamental importance is the changing role of women in society. The rise of the service economy, with its abundance of physically light jobs, together with the advent of highly efficient household labor-saving devices, has greatly increased women’s job opportunities outside the home. That increase has in turn increased women’s financial independence and thus reduced the gains to them from marriage. It has also increased the opportunity costs of childbearing: the higher a woman’s income, the more she gives up if she leaves the labor force, whether temporarily or permanently, to have children. So this is another factor raising the cost of marriage to women.

The consequence of all these things has been to reduce the marriage rate and delay the average age of marriage, and also to reduce the cost of divorce to women (and to men, by reducing the benefits of marriage to men who want to have children and stay-at-home wives). With less and later marriage and more divorce, women spend less of their sexually active years married and so their demand for nonmarital sex—sex made in any event less risky by improved contraception and the availability of abortion—soars.

The increased demand for divorce was a factor in the successful movement for easy divorce, and easy divorce makes it impossible to channel sex into marriage. In communities (and there are still some) in which premarital sex is strongly disapproved, young people marry to have sex, but marriages so motivated are likely to end in divorce, producing more unmarried people and so more demand for nonmarital sex.

Another factor that influences behavior in the same direction, though one that predates the developments that I have just been discussing, is the long-term decline in child mortality, as a result of which it is no longer necessary for women to be almost continuously pregnant in order to have a reasonable number of children survive to adulthood. In addition, with the decline of the farm population and the rise of social security, children’s value as farm labor and old-age insurance diminishes, and as a result the demand for children falls.

With more and more sex taking place outside of marriage, homosexual activity comes to seem less anomalous than in a society in which almost all sexual activity is (or at least is believed to be) confined to marriage. That is, once the link between marriage and sex is weakened, and sex comes to be thought of as worthwhile in itself rather than just as a means of procreation, nonprocreative sex—of which homosexual sex is a conspicuous example—begins to lose its opprobrium.

It may seem paradoxical to suggest that marriage and homosexuality are somehow linked; but they are. In societies like that of ancient Greece, in which men are expected to marry in order to procreate but are not expected to establish an intimate emotional connection with their wife (for example, in ancient Greece husband and wife did not eat together, and the wife rarely was even permitted outside the house), it is not difficult for homosexual men to marry. But when companionate marriage becomes the norm—when men are still expected to marry, but marriage connotes much more than occasional intercourse—homosexual men become anomalous; the institution of companionate, as distinct from patriarchal, marriage tends to extrude them from a fundamental social institution. Companionate marriage is still the marriage norm, but fewer people are married, so unmarried men are less conspicuous.

The major Western religions, especially Christianity, and within Christianity especially Roman Catholicism, are increasingly defined by their opposition to the modern loosening of sexual mores. This is not because these religions have become increasingly prudish (though Catholicism takes a harder line against abortion than it did until the nineteenth century, and though a concern with sexual conduct plays a notably small role in the New Testament), but because their teachings on sex have become ever more removed from the behavior of their votaries. Pope John Paul II seemed unusually conservative in matters of sex not because he was making Catholic sex doctrine more severe, but because he was refusing to yield to strong pressures to relax it. He was swimming against the tide. Even though the United States is in the midst of a very striking religious revival, religion’s grip on behavior has weakened. Hence the contrast between vastly increased tolerance for homosexual behavior and powerful opposition, much though not all of it religiously based, to gay marriage. Hence, too, the great difficulty the Catholic Church is having in attracting young men into the priesthood, especially young heterosexual men—an all-male occupation holds obvious attractions for homosexual men, especially if the behavioral constraints of religious doctrine are weakening even for persons who desire a religious career.

To the extent that as a result of economic and technological change, sex ceases to be considered either dangerous or important, we can expect it to become a morally indifferent activity, as eating has mainly become (though not for orthodox Jews and Muslims). At this writing, that seems to be the trend in many societies, including our own. This is not historically unprecedented; many cultures have been far more casual about sex than our own—ancient Greece, for example.

I emphasize that this has been an essay in positive rather than normative moral theory. My concern is not with whether the changes in sexual mores that I have been discussing are right or wrong, but with trying to explain what has brought about the changes. I believe they can largely be explained in economic terms.

COMMENTS ON THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION—BECKER

Pope John Paul II was conservative on family matters, but was highly innovative on more important questions for the Catholic Church in the long run. These include his early, continued, and open hostility to communism when many intellectuals and some church leaders were supportive or accommodating, his steering of the clergy in Latin America and elsewhere out of active involvement in politics, his much more favorable attitude to capitalism than his predecessors, his rapprochement to the Jews and Muslims, and his commitment to peace, even when he differed with America and other powerful nations.

This explain the worldwide outpouring of grief over the pope’s death, including the vast majority of Catholics who were violating church doctrines on contraceptives and divorce. He will be long remembered for these enormous contributions, whatever happens to the sexual revolution.

I start this way in my comment on Posner partly to express the high regard I have for Pope John Paul II (I should make clear that I was elected to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences while he was pope). A reason more directly relevant to our topic this week is that the conflict between the actual behavior of most Catholics and the Church’s doctrines on contraceptive use and other family matters is not unusual when dealing with culture and norms. Indeed, it dramatically illustrates the fact that powerful economic and social forces usually trump religious views and other social norms, until these views and norms adjust to the new forces. Birth rates, divorce, and premarital sex provide a powerful example of this well-known principle.

For many reasons, most mentioned by Posner, families in modern countries generally have few children, and instead invest a lot in the education, training, and health of each child. These reasons include the high value of human capital in technologically advanced economies; low rates of child mortality; the growth of female education, earnings, and labor force participation; and the decline of manufacturing and rise of the service economy. Among other things, these forces increased the financial independence of women that gave them a greater say in family matters, and made them much more willing to divorce than in the past.

As a result of these forces, the vast majority of families in the world have fewer than three children. There is no effective way to do this, while continuing normal sexual activity, without extensive reliance on effective contraception. So as economic development has spread throughout the world, family after family, regardless of their religious views, have greatly increased their contraceptive use in order to have fewer children. Birth rates in Spain, Italy, Poland, and other predominantly Catholic countries are among the lowest anywhere. Ireland is the most religious country in the Christian world by virtually all measures of religiosity, yet Irish families are using contraception extensively. Their birth rates have plummeted, even while they loved Pope John Paul II, and remain highly devout Catholics. Clearly, these families are separating their decisions about contraception from their degree of religiosity.

Low birth rates were made easier by better and more efficient contraceptives. The attractiveness and effectiveness of condoms continued to improve throughout the past eighty years. The pill, the most effective method of birth control, was developed only in the 1950s. Abortion became safer and legal in growing numbers of nations. The legalization of abortion illustrates that it is difficult to be certain about how much of the improvement in birth control methods were a response to pressure from families wanting few children and how much was due to technological innovations that proceeded largely independent of such demand.

Whatever the causation, better ways to prevent births became available not only to married couples, but also to their teenage children. The rapid growth in premarital teenage sexual activity not only in the United States, but also in many other nations, is the strongest manifestation of the “sexual revolution.” Teenagers could now explore sex without much fear of pregnancy, a fear that was a major form of “birth control” in the past. Surveys on premarital sexual activity among American nineteen-year-old females indicate that the fraction that had engaged in premarital intercourse grew from about 25 percent in 1950 to around 80 percent currently. The number of sexual partners women had by age twenty also increased greatly.

Data further indicate that the larger numbers of teenagers engaging in premarital intercourse know more about and have easier access to effectives contraceptives than did sexually active teenagers in the past. About 60 percent of the women in 1960 who engaged for the first time in premarital intercourse used no contraception, while condoms were used 20 percent of the time. By the mid 1990s, about two- thirds used either condoms or the pill.

Yet even in recent years, a quarter of teenage women who engage in inter course for the first time use no contraception. This is a larger fraction of all teenagers than the total fraction of teenagers in 1950 who engaged in premarital intercourse. So the sharp growth in sexual activity among young persons was not simply due to better and better-known contraceptives, but also to a greater willingness to engage in sex prior to marriage. This is strong evidence that the sexual revolution led to a much more permissive and receptive attitude toward sex outside of marriage even without birth control, although abortion is now an option for many women.

Events such as economic growth and new technologies often induce changes in behavior despite prevailing norms that initially oppose this behavior. As this new behavior becomes more common and habitual, norms evolve to catch up to the behavior. This adjustment of norms to behavior rather than simply vice versa is widespread, including attitudes toward sex, divorce, women working, husbands helping out with child care, and children supporting elderly parents. Time will tell whether the attitudes of the Catholic Church on sexual matters will also evolve, but I believe that the Church will still be attractive to many Catholics even if their behavior violates Church teachings on questions like contraception.

So it is possible to understand the basis of the sexual revolution using an economic approach, but the approach must recognize that norms and habits are also important. These norms and habits usually adjust eventually to new forms of behavior, and the new norms greatly accelerate this behavior after they do adjust.

I disagree with Posner that sex will become, either morally or in other ways, just another consumer activity, like eating. Sexual intercourse is a very intimate relation between two people that grew as humans evolved during the past fifty thousand years when they apparently began to separate into families. This relation carries a lot of emotional attachment and baggage that will not vanish simply because contraceptives are effective and birth rates are low.

Chapter Two

GAY MARRIAGE July 17, 2005

THE LAW AND ECONOMICS OF GAY MARRIAGE—POSNER

The surprising decision of Spain, once the most Catholic country in Europe (except for Ireland), to recognize gay marriage—a decision that comes in the wake of a similar decision by Canada and, of course, by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts—presents an appropriate occasion on which to consider what light economic analysis might shed on the issue.

Economics focuses on the consequences of social action. One clear negative consequence is the outrage felt by opponents of gay marriage and of homosexual rights in general. Philosophers like John Stuart Mill would not consider that such outrage should figure in the social welfare calculus; Mill famously argued in On Liberty that an individual has no valid interest in the activities of other people that don’t affect him except psychologically. (Mill had in mind the indignation felt by English people at Mormon polygamy occurring thousands of miles away in Utah.) But that is not a good economic argument because there is no difference from an economic standpoint between physical and emotional harm; either one lowers the utility of the harmed person.

(Continues…)

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