George Gilder's "Naked Nomad's" is a great book studying single men in America. Unmarried men own the majority of bad statistical categories to be in. Higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates. No society wants that burden.
This could also mean that women avoid getting married to men who are prone to "higher death, suicide, crime, and disease rates". For example, how many women would really get married to a hobo?
Yeah, selection bias. Not just shiftless hobos, either. As a man you're going to have a harder time finding a wife if you're sick or have unhealthy habits (like obesity or heavy drinking).
Edit: I expect the same is true for single women, too. I doubt single women live as long as their married counterparts on a statistical basis.
On a crude statistical basis children born out of wedlock don't fare too well either, yet the Economist article paints them as some kind of Western demographic advantage.
I haven't read the book so I wouldn't know whether the Gilder successfully separates cause from effect when examining unmarried men, but extrapolating his conclusions to Asia may be difficult anyway. On the one hand it may be rather more socially unacceptable to be unmarried over a certain age in Asia but on the other, unmarried men at the bottom of the social pile will perhaps be heartened by the relative prevalence and social acceptability of the sex industry. Then you have the vast differences between crime and suicide rates in general.
On a crude statistical basis children born out of wedlock don't fare too well either,...
True, but the crude statistical basis fails to account for wealth (and to a lesser extent race). In the US, marriage is for rich people. Since the children of rich people fare well in general, the bias here is obvious.
I'd love to see stats comparing children born out of wedlock holding income and race fixed.
I believe that book used to be titled Men and Marriage, right? Essential social science book, I agree.
EDIT: Actually, I see now that those are two different books. Men and Marriage was a re-titling of Gilder's Sexual Suicide, and the sequel to Naked Nomads.
