What’s really behind America’s male recession?

For decades, economists have stared at the declining labor force participation rate among American men the way medieval villagers stared at an eclipse: bewildered, frightened and bereft of decent answers.

The numbers are troubling. In 1950, 86.4 percent of American men over age 20 were either working or looking for work. Today, that figure hovers below 70 percent. Generation after generation, millions of men have exited the labor force. Some are disabled and some retired early, but a growing number have simply removed themselves from the economic ecosystem altogether, trading the daily grind for the blissful nirvana of doing absolutely nothing.

The explanations offered over the years have ranged from plausible to absurd. Construction cratered after the housing crash. Automation destroyed blue-collar jobs. Globalization eviscerated manufacturing. Men stayed in school longer or became caretakers. Men lost skills demanded by a changing economy. It was a buffet of macro-disasters, a perfect storm of economic obsolescence that left millions of guys stranded on the couch.

Then came one of the more entertaining theories: video games. According to this narrative, vast numbers of young men were apparently abandoning work because they had become hopelessly addicted to increasingly sophisticated digital entertainment. Civilization itself, it seemed, was being defeated by better graphics cards and high-definition dopamine hits.

There was only one problem with this convenient scapegoat: Women now play video games at rates equal to men, with the gaming industry reporting near-parity among many age groups. Yet female labor force participation has remained........

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