My paper with Victoria Baranov and Pauline Grosjean “Men. Roots and Consequences of Masculinity Norms” is now available as a CEPR Discussion Paper. Short on time? We’ve also written a short VoxEU column and a piece on the Economic History Society’s The Long Run blog.
In a nutshell: our paper exploits a natural historical experiment in which convict transportation in the 18th and 19th century created a variegated spatial pattern of sex ratios across Australia. We show that areas that were heavily male-biased in the past (though not the present) remain characterized by more violence, higher rates of male suicide and other forms of preventable male mortality, and more male-stereotypical occupational segregation. Further evidence indicates that in these historically male-biased areas, more Australians recently voted against same-sex marriage and that boys—but not girls—are more likely to be bullied in school. We interpret these results as manifestations of masculinity norms that emerged due to intense local male-male competition and that persisted over time through peer socialization in schools.
