“Sexual Intercourse Began/In Nineteen Sixty Three/Which was rather late for me/Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban/And the Beatles’ first LP” wrote the British poet Philip Larkin in his poem “Annus Mirabilis.” Those lines have always been popular, since they seem to express a change in the global zeitgeist that happened around that year. But if that’s the case, then we’re coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of bad behavior, and it’s worth asking what long-term economic changes this change has brought, and where it may lead in the future.
While Americans remember 1963 for the Kennedy assassination, Britons of the right age remember the year for the Profumo scandal, a salacious tale that ended the political career of war minister John Profumo. Yet the goings-on around the swimming pool at David Astor’s country house Cliveden were not evidence of a new sexual liberation (anyway, they happened in 1961) — the young ladies involved, while very attractive and with a certain Cockney charm, were professionals and the goings-on could easily have happened among the upper classes of the 1890s, though doubtless in those days with more clothes on.
The real change around 1963 was technological. The female contraceptive pill had been developed by G.D. Searle in 1957, was approved by the U.S. FDA in 1960 and became available through Britain’s National Health Service in 1961. Given the usual lags in public acceptance, 1963 was around the point at which it became widely used. Add that to the “Beatles first LP” development of rock music that occurred that year and the Profumo scandal, and you have a realistic base-line for Larkin’s verse (which was actually written in 1967 and published in 1974).
One can however disagree with Larkin’s conclusion, later in the poem that “Life was never better than/In Nineteen Sixty Three,” although no doubt randy middle-aged poets had fun. The change in mores that occurred in 1963 has had a number of adverse socio-economic effects, as outlined by Charles Murray in his recent “Coming Apart” (Crown Forum, 2012). About 46% of marriages end in divorce, over 40% of births are illegitimate, and only around 50% of Americans marry.
Murray outlines how the decline is more pronounced among the lower socio-economic strata, with the socioeconomic top 20% marrying, divorcing and having legitimate children at approximately the same rate as fifty years ago, although even for these people marriage is typically later and fertility less than in earlier generations. This dichotomy has exacerbated the tendency in modern societies for fertility to be greater among the poor than among the rich, producing a genetic imbalance whose unpleasant long-term implications were brilliantly captured in Mike Judge’s 2006 film “Idiocracy.”
The economic effects of 1963’s revolution have been considerable. On the one hand, women have joined and remained in the workforce in much greater numbers, so that even children of stable marriages are subjected to the stresses of growing up in two-career families. As one would expect, the advent of such a large extra supply of labor has reduced its price, so that in spite of substantial economic growth since the 1970s, real wage levels for all but the most skilled have remained stagnant or even declined. Given the costs of adequate childcare, most families find their living standards with two working parents to be no better than their parents’ living standards with only one, although in this time of high unemployment and economic disruption the family’s economic insecurity is considerably lessened, since there are two paychecks to depend on, not just one vulnerable one.
The 1963 change has also been manifest in ways not evident in the marriage statistics, some of which have contributed to rather than detracted from human happiness. With so much extra-marital activity, sexual experimentation and indeed expertise has become much more prevalent, so that the hedonic benefits from sexual activity are in general much higher than 50 years ago. The activity has also extended its age boundaries; people for whom sexual intercourse began in 1963 are unlikely to stop seeking it in 2013, if opportunities arise. On the other hand, a reduction in two-parent childbearing is almost certainly hedonically negative, both for any children and for the parents. In the right circumstances, parenting is even more satisfying than nookie.
Sexual activity has also spread beyond the heterosexual couples to which it was very largely limited before 1963 (homosexual activity was illegal in Britain at that time), which has resulted in a redefinition of marriage. Whatever the logical and societal reasons for not recognizing “gay marriage,” it seems overwhelmingly likely that within the next 20 years recognition will be more or less universal across the 50 U.S. states, as well as in Britain.
One economic effect of the new order with strong political implications is that with such a high proportion of people remaining single, the economic needs of single people have become more salient in the political marketplace. While singles in their 20s and 30s may often be able to depend on parents or even siblings, many older singles no longer have parents to fall back on, and with smaller and split-parent families, may not have siblings either. They may also save less than their married peers, devoting a high percentage of their income to courtship, finery and expensive vacations. Older singles are thus generally more economically insecure than families, at least families in which both spouses work. This increases the attractiveness of a strong if expensive social safety net; the Obama campaign’s “Julia,” helped and protected by government from cradle to grave may for such people be a recognizable and attractive paradigm rather than the figure of derision she appeared to free-marketers.
It’s most unlikely that the 50-year sexual revolution has come to a standstill at this point. Equally, its economic costs, both to the people involved and through the social pathologies identified by Murray, are currently very considerable. Thus it’s unlikely that the two-class behavioral divergence identified by Murray will intensify, or even continue at its present level. For economic seers, identifying a final resting point for sexual arrangements is of considerable importance.
To identify the movement’s trajectory, the forces affecting it need to be assessed. On the one hand, traditional moral values have been weakened considerably by the movement, and seem unlikely to regenerate. Each generation’s hold on such values is weaker than the previous generation’s, and the forces in opposition are of undiminished strength. That’s not to say that traditionalists will lose all the moral wars; in particular as biological understanding increases, the 1970s view of abortion appears untenable, and it’s likely that by 2050 restrictions will be considerably tighter than they are currently. Conversely as discussed above gay marriage is here to stay.
In the dawn of the sexual revolution, the permissive view, led by the likes of Erica Jong and such books as “The Harrad Experiment” (in which students coupled enthusiastically with various different partners) argued that all barriers to sexual experimentation would disappear. With fifty years’ experience, that seems unlikely. Both men and women value long-term intimacy in their relationships, and successful parenthood also requires stability over a long period. For a minority of the population, monogamy may thus remain the expectation.
For others, the solution probably lies in polygamy/polyandry and group marriage. If marriage is no longer defined as between one man and one woman, then alternative arrangements that provide variety, stability and financial support should become more popular, eventually to be enshrined in the legal code.
Monogamy is by no means universal in human societies; its dominance represented a feminine triumph over the natural young man’s ideal of polygamy (in a society with a life expectancy of 30), with the best mammoth hunters getting several of the most attractive women. However if contraception (and indeed genetic identification of offspring) is reliable, and many women have careers, it’s likely that for some people polygamy, polyandry, or group marriage will come to seem economically and psychologically attractive. Indeed, a society with group marriage will have correspondingly less need of divorce (a considerable economic benefit, as I can personally attest, having been through that unpleasant and expensive process twice)!
One can imagine a future society in which the very rich of both sexes (whether by business success or through sport or movies) have several spouses, not serially but simultaneously, bearing children with some or all of them. At less exalted levels, group arrangements will be common, with men and women who find the career grind unattractive devoting themselves to housewifery, child rearing or “home schooling” — instilling the group’s culture and values rather than those of the local school system. That will ensure the group’s children get adequate attention, while group members of both sexes who want both children and a career are able to provide financial support rather than time to the group’s activities.
It all sounds very communal and late 60’s. But in reality it doesn’t need to be; the participants will generally not be stoned impoverished hippies, but highly respectable and productive citizens, perhaps even expressing this in their costumes through wing-collars, crinolines or the 2100 versions thereof. Groups will be stable and will bring up children with a proper level of attention, education and discipline.
Philip Larkin, who never married, saw in 1963 an opportunity for more bachelor fun and games. Charles Murray sees in the revolution it produced a decay of traditional society, with highly adverse economic and social effects on those who reject its disciplines. However in the years to come, a descent further into Murray’s dystopia seems unlikely. Instead, while traditional marriage patterns may become even less prevalent, new paradigms are likely to appear, that preserve the discipline, structure and long-term orientation of traditional marriage, while combining the economic and psychological benefits of the sexual revolution and women’s liberation. Thesis plus antithesis produces synthesis, said Marx; one can thus hope that the current marital chaos, poverty, misery and breakdown are merely transitional.
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(The Bear’s Lair is a weekly column that is intended to appear each Monday, an appropriately gloomy day of the week. Its rationale is that the proportion of “sell” recommendations put out by Wall Street houses remains far below that of “buy” recommendations. Accordingly, investors have an excess of positive information and very little negative information. The column thus takes the ursine view of life and the market, in the hope that it may be usefully different from what investors see elsewhere.)