The economic challenges facing men without college degrees

Summary

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The Indicator from Planet Money

Episode: The Economic Challenges Facing Men Without College Degrees
Date: December 27, 2025
Host: Darian Woods
Guest: Richard Reeves, President of the American Institute for Boys and Men

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into a critical but often overlooked issue: the economic and social challenges facing men without college degrees in the United States. Darian Woods interviews Richard Reeves, author and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, to discuss the stagnation—and in some cases decline—in wages and employment opportunities for working-class men, how these trends are shaped by shifts in the labor market and cultural expectations, and potential solutions moving forward.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Are Men Earning More Now Than They Used To?

• Complexity of Measuring Wage Progress

  • The answer depends on what years are compared, age ranges, and how inflation is accounted for.
  • Quote: “There are no simple answers in social science or economics. I sometimes feel it's a bit like… the Groucho Marx quote about, well, these are my principles; if you don't like them, I have others.”
    — Richard Reeves [00:33]

• Methodology

  • Reeves prefers using 1979 as the starting year due to improved wage data and significant changes in measurement.
  • Focuses on men aged 25 and up to account for extended working ages and remove distortions from those still in education.
  • Critically, divides data by educational attainment.
  • Quote: “The real story here is it depends which men you’re asking about.”
    — Richard Reeves [03:11]

• Findings (1979-2023, men age 25+):

  • 4-year college degree: Wages up 38%
  • Some college/associate degree: Up 3% (essentially flat)
  • High school degree: Down 7%
  • Less than high school: Down 11%
  • Fewer men are in those lowest categories today, yet the class gap has widened dramatically.
  • Quote: “Men with a four year college degree have seen healthy wage growth over the last few decades. But for men without a four year college degree, wages have been at best flat. And for many of those, gone down.”
    — Richard Reeves [04:32]

2. Inflation Adjustment: PCE vs. CPI

• Reeves advocates using the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index as the most accurate inflation deflator for wages, capturing real buying power and substitution effects in consumer choices.

  • Quote: “PCE is the best for that. CPI is not very good for that and tends to actually give a gloomier picture of wage growth.”
    — Richard Reeves [05:11]

• Substitution example:

  • If apples become expensive but pears are cheap, consumers switch—PCE accounts for this, CPI largely does not.
  • Memorable Moment: “We’re in a full nerd out now. So this is our happy place, right?”
    — Richard Reeves [06:01]

3. Causes of Stagnation & Decline

• Economic Shifts

  • Loss of well-paid, low-education jobs in sectors like manufacturing, steel, and mining due to automation, free trade, and a shift toward a more service-oriented economy.
  • Structural Change: Women and workers of color gaining access to jobs previously reserved for white men—increasing equality, but intensifying competition and eroding job premiums.
  • Unions have weakened; international competition has increased.
  • Many men today are worse off, in real wage terms, compared to their fathers, especially those from lower-income backgrounds.

• Relativity and Social Comparison

  • Reeves observes the psychological impact of downward mobility:
    “A lot of guys out there… are actually poorer than their dads, even though they've got at least as much education as their dads had. And I think psychologically that does have quite a big impact on people.”
    — Richard Reeves [07:57]

4. Stagnant Household Incomes & Cultural Impact

• Women's Earnings Counterbalance

  • Stagnant/declining male earnings have been partially offset by increases in women's earnings and rising labor force participation.
  • Quote: “Women's increased earnings and employment has held up working class households in a way that they would have been plummeting otherwise.”
    — Richard Reeves [09:13]

• Provider Role Still Central For Many Men

  • Many men, especially with less education, still see themselves as primary breadwinners—a role fewer can now fulfill.

  • Memorable Moment: “There's a certain cultural tragedy there, which is that the men who are most attached to this idea of their role as an economic provider are the ones who are now least able to provide it.”
    — Richard Reeves [11:38]

  • Those with higher education have more flexible identities—fathers, community members, etc.—but working-class men are more likely to equate self-worth with earning power.

5. Class and Elite Blindspots

• Elite Disconnection
  • Many educated elites see high-status men and assume broadly positive male outcomes, neglecting the challenges faced by less-educated men, including Black and Hispanic men.
  • Quote: “The inability to see properly across class lines has made too many elite Americans blind to the gendered nature of a lot of what's happening now, especially… men with less economic power, working class men, but also black men too, and Hispanic men.”
    — Richard Reeves [12:46]

6. Male Labor Force Participation Decline

• Sharp decline in participation among men without college degrees.
  • 1979: 90% employed; 2023: 81% employed for non-college men.
  • For college-educated men: still about 93%.
• Reason for Non-Participation Differs by Class
  • College-educated men often out for positive reasons (more education, early retirement, caregiving).
  • Non-college men mostly cite sickness/disability or health problems.
  • Drug and substance abuse among working-class men has risen significantly.
  • Quote: “Half of them say the reason they're not in the labor force… is because they're sick or disabled. That's the single biggest reason.”
    — Richard Reeves [16:18]

7. Solutions: Economic and Cultural

• Policy Recommendations:

  • Increase infrastructure investment (creates well-paid jobs not requiring degrees).
  • Dramatically expand vocational training, apprenticeships, and trade schools—a sector the US underinvests in relative to other advanced economies.
  • A four-year college isn’t the right path for many, especially men; viable alternatives must be funded and respected.

• Men in ‘HEAL’ Jobs (Health, Education, Administration, Literacy):

  • Need for more men in growing, people-oriented professions (nursing, teaching, counseling), where male participation is falling.

  • Quote: “We’ve done a pretty good job of getting more women into traditionally male jobs. We’ve done a lousy job of helping men into more female jobs.”
    — Richard Reeves [18:18]

  • There's a "triple tragedy": decent jobs going unfilled, professions missing out on male perspectives, and men missing career opportunities.

• Broader Redefinition of Masculinity:

  • Essential to Wert men's worth not solely by income but also through fatherhood, community service, and non-economic contributions.
  • Quote: “Our tribe still needs you, even if it’s in a different and new way. And that’s a much bigger challenge than just economic policy. That’s a cultural shift that we are only partway through.”
    — Richard Reeves [21:36]

8. Shifting the Conversation: Richard Reeves’s Book Journey

• Reeves struggled to find a publisher for his 2022 book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It, due to fears he’d be perceived as reactionary.
• The book found success, eventually landing on Barack Obama’s 2024 reading list.
• Quote: “If you talk about the problems of boys and men, everyone will think you're a frothing at the mouth conservative. But… if you basically say the only people allowed to talk about boys and men's issues are frothing at the mouth conservatives, you can't really complain that they're the only people talking about it.”
  — Richard Reeves [22:44]
• Pledge: to keep the conversation evidence-based, reasonable, and non-zero sum.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamped Highlights

• "There are no simple answers in social science or economics."
  — Richard Reeves [00:33]

• "Men with a four year college degree have seen healthy wage growth ... But for men without a four year college degree, wages have been at best flat. And for many of those, gone down."
  — Richard Reeves [04:32]

• "One of the really difficult cultural disconnects right now is ... many, many fewer men today are able to fill this role of the economic provider."
  — Richard Reeves [09:54]

• "The inability to see properly across class lines has made too many elite Americans blind to the gendered nature of a lot of what's happening now, especially ... men with less economic power."
  — Richard Reeves [12:46]

• "We’ve done a pretty good job of getting more women into traditionally male jobs. We've done a lousy job of helping men into more female jobs."
  — Richard Reeves [18:18]

• "Our tribe still needs you, even if it’s in a different and new way. And that’s a much bigger challenge than just economic policy. That’s a cultural shift that we are only partway through."
  — Richard Reeves [21:36]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:33] – The challenge of defining and measuring changes in men’s earnings
• [03:11] – Reeve’s approach: 1979 as the baseline, importance of education level
• [04:32] – Data: Wage gains/losses by education segment
• [05:11] – Why PCE inflation is preferred over CPI
• [06:40] – Economic shifts and the loss of well-paid, low-education jobs
• [09:13] – How increased women’s earnings have stabilized households
• [11:38] – Why provider role expectations are a “cultural tragedy” for working-class men
• [12:46] – Elite disconnect from the working-class male experience
• [14:41] – Trends in male labor force participation and reasons for men not seeking work
• [17:16] – Policy solutions: infrastructure, vocational pathways
• [18:18] – Scarcity of men in HEAL professions; triple tragedy
• [21:36] – Need to redefine masculinity and men’s roles
• [22:44] – Reeves on the risk of ceding discussion of men’s issues to reactionary voices

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Conclusion

Richard Reeves and Darian Woods provide a nuanced, compassionate examination of the troubling trends faced by men—especially those without college degrees—in today’s economy. The episode calls for both practical policy reforms and a collective cultural reset, shifting how we value men’s contributions to society. For listeners seeking data, analysis, and a hopeful but realistic path forward, this conversation is a compelling, accessible entry point to an urgent topic.

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Transcript

[Richard Reeves]

Npr.

[Darren Woods]

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darren Woods. It's the season of giving. So today we are giving you an extra episode to enjoy. It starts with a question about men and money. Now, over the last several decades, have men been earning more now than they used to?

[Richard Reeves]

Well, there are no simple answers in social science or economics. I sometimes feel it's a bit like, you know, the Groucho Marx quote about, well, these are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.

[Darren Woods]

Richard Reeves is president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. And Richard says to answer this question about the change in men's wages depends on the answer to other questions, like what span of years are being compared and what ages are you looking at.

[Richard Reeves]

Over the age of 16, prime age men, which distressingly is defined as 25 to 54.

[Darren Woods]

How old are you?

[Richard Reeves]

I'm 55. I know. You just I am literally no longer prime age according to maybe I'm subprime.

[Announcer]

Thank you.

[Richard Reeves]

And then perhaps, like nerdiest of all, you can decide how to adjust for inflation.

[Darren Woods]

So do you use a common measure like the consumer price index or something else?

[Richard Reeves]

And so all of those different decisions, which men by age, which starting year and which measure of inflation can have massive differences in the story you want to tell.

[Darren Woods]

For Richard, the story he wants us to focus on is one he argues has been ignored and overlooked in elite circles, the economic and social challenges facing men, particularly men without college degrees. Richard wrote about this in his 2022 book of boys and why the Modern male is struggling, why it matters and what to do about. He says the potential solutions involve economic policy, but just as important, a major cultural shift in how we see the roles of man. Today's episode is an interview with Richard Reeves. He was on the show a while back, but there was a lot of great stuff we did not have time for in the episode. So this version today is one that our NPR supporters got to hear in a bonus episode. It was one of our most popular bonus episodes of the year, and today we're excited to share it with everybody. This is the kind of thing we love sharing for NPR listeners. You can learn more and sign [e-mail] so here it is, my conversation with Richard Reaves. We circled back to the question we started with at the very top, are men earning more now than they used to? Well, Richard Reeves, I have an assignment for you. I have no prior desire to show it going up or down. I just want to see what your best estimate is. So what assumptions would you use and what do you find?

[Richard Reeves]

You want the truth, that's what you're saying?

[Darren Woods]

Whatever's closest to that, yeah. Is that naive of me?

[Richard Reeves]

No, it's not naive of you. And actually. But it's about sort of truthfulness. And so what that means is just being really clear what assumptions you've made when you're making these claims. And so I like to use 1979 as a starting year because I think that wages can change a lot over a few years. You've even seen that pre and post pandemic. And as it turns out, we have really good statistics on wages starting in 1979. That was a year when we actually changed some of the way we measured wages. Right. And so anything before 1979 you have to treat with a little bit of caution. The second thing I would do is I'm going to say I'm going to look at men over the age of 25 and the reason I'm going to do that is because there's a lot of men in education. If you're working at 17, that's very different. But I'm not going to arbitrarily cut it off at 54. And that's not just because I'm 55, it's because actually I think a lot of men are working much longer than that. So I'm going to go 25 plus. And then what I'm crucially going to do is I'm going to do it by education level. Because the real story here is it depends which men you're asking about. And so if I make all of those assumptions, what I find is that from 1979 to 2023, the wages of men with a four year college degree have gone up by 38%. The wages of men with some college or an associate's degree has gone up by just 3%.

[Darren Woods]

Basically stagnation, given how long it was.

[Richard Reeves]

Basically flat. The wages of men with a high school degree has dropped by 7% and the wages of men with less than a high school degree has dropped by 11%. Now, important caveat here, there are fewer men in those last categories than there were in 1979. So the numbers affected by those are different. So the overall story is of a class gap. Men with a four year college degree have seen healthy wage growth over the last few decades. But for men without a four year college degree, wages have been at best flat. And for many of those, gone down.

[Darren Woods]

You talked about the assumptions around inflation. What assumptions around inflation are you using in those Numbers.

[Richard Reeves]

So we're using a measure of inflation called pce, which is the personal consumption expenditure measure. There are all kinds of others, cpi. And then you can adjust cpi, Consumer Price Index, you can adjust those for all kinds of different things too. But there is pretty broad consensus now among labor market economists that the PCE is the best deflator for wages. It's the one that really most accurately captures what we're trying to get at here, which is what's the buying power of your paycheck? And PCE is the best for that. CPI is not very good for that and tends to actually give a gloomier picture of wage growth.

[Darren Woods]

Is that because CPI doesn't adjust for, let's say apples go up in price, oranges go down in price. It can't for the fact that I'm going to go for the cheaper oranges.

[Richard Reeves]

Correct. We're in a full nerd out now. So this is our happy place. Right? Which is exactly right. One of the things the PC does is it allows for what economists call substitution effects. And it just says that it recognizes that in the real world, if something becomes one fruit, to use apples in your example, becomes incredibly expensive. But pears are cheap. People will just buy pears, and they're not really very much worse off as a result. And so you can substitute across a whole range of different goods and the PCE takes that into account. And so if you're trying to get at like, what's a reasonable basket of goods, a reasonable quality of life that I can buy with my wages, allowing for some of those substitution effects, PCE actually is a better figure.

[Darren Woods]

Okay, so basically what I'm hearing from you is stagnation at best for men without a four year college degree. What's behind this?

[Richard Reeves]

Well, the huge changes in the economy that we've seen, of course mean that like many of the jobs that some of those men without a college degree would have gotten would have been in areas like manufacturing, steel, mining, etc. Which actually paid pretty well, even though they didn't have high educational requirements because they were physically demanding, quite risky, et cetera. But also, to be honest, it's partly because in many cases those were industries from which many others were excluded. Particularly if you were a white man, you actually had access to some of these decently paid jobs. But one of the reasons they were perhaps paid even better than they would have been in a fully free market is because women were typically not welcomed into those professions. But very often workers of color weren't either. And of course very Strongly unionized, and then of course, free trade. And so we've seen a lot of these, you know, a lot of competition from abroad, meaning that the jobs that were previously able to be done, especially by men with relatively low levels of education, have either come down in their wages because of, to some extent, the good news of fairer competition from women and workers of color, but also from the competition that you've seen from abroad. And so I think one of the things that's really difficult about this moment is that many men, especially if they're from lower income households, they're worse off than their fathers were in terms of wages. And I'm reasonably convinced that very often that's the comparison that people are drawing, that there is a sense of everything's relative and the question is relative to what? And I think for a lot of people, they do have this intuitive sense that they're comparing themselves to how their parents were doing. And maybe even there's a bit of gender to that too, which is that guys are going to compare themselves to how their fathers did, especially if their fathers didn't have more education than them. And I think a hard fact of American economic life now, and maybe American political life too, is that there are a lot of guys out there who are actually poorer than their dads, even though they've got at least as much education as their dads had. And I think psychologically that does have quite a big impact on people. So even if it's happened for good reasons as well as bad reasons, it doesn't change the fact that it's quite hard to be downwardly mobile. It's quite hard to be poorer than your parents.

[Darren Woods]

Now this gets to a related topic, which is perhaps the households might actually be as well or even better off than the previous generation because the woman, if there is a man and a woman in the household, the woman might be offsetting that stagnating or even declining.

[Richard Reeves]

Wage that has happened. I mean, that's the only reason why many of these households have not actually why household income hasn't dropped more than at least women's increased earnings. And employment has held up working class households in a way that they would have been plummeting otherwise.

[Darren Woods]

And I get the sense that while social change has moved for a lot of us, where some people are agnostic, whether it's a man earning or the woman earnings, a lot of men out there believe they should be the main provider of the household. And when they cannot be, that's a real psychological toll for them.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, I think One of the really difficult cultural disconnects right now is the fact that many, many fewer men today are able to fill this role of the economic provider, the main economic provider. And that's for a very good reason as well as a bad reason. Now, the good reason is just because obviously many, many women are much more economically independent. Now, again, to use 79 as a good base year for this, in 1979, 13% of women earned more than the median man.

[Announcer]

Wow.

[Richard Reeves]

It's small minority, typical man. Now it's 40% of women. So that's not 50%, 40%. Still not at equality. But a world where almost half of women earn more than the median man is a very different world to one where only 13% of women did. The wage distributions of men and women now look much more similar today than they did before. That's obviously great news from a gender perspective, but at the same time, huge increase in class gaps. And the cultural question you raise is the central one, which is okay, and have we updated our view about the role of men as quickly as we've changed the economy around them? And the answer is no. And it's particularly true for working class men. And so if you look at the survey evidence, it suggests that the men and women who most strongly hold the view that men should be able to be the main provider are the men and the women for whom that is least likely to be true. In other words, it's among those with less education who hold that view. So there's a certain cultural tragedy there, which is that the men who are most attached to this idea of their role as an economic provider are the ones who are now least able to provide it. And so that, that I think, does create this issue of the sense of failure among men. And one of the reasons why I think class really matters here is that men with four year college degrees and above, we're not only better off economically than in previous generations, we've probably also got many more ways to identify ourselves that are outside of our purely economic role. So we're much more involved as fathers, for example, we may have a broader sense of the contribution we're making to our family. And I think what that means is, and I'll risk offending a lot of people when I say that I think part of the problem right now is that people who wonder, what's all this stuff about men struggling? What are we talking about? They're probably people who are in quite elite and well educated circles where men are actually not struggling, but those are not the men we should be worried about.

[Darren Woods]

Yeah, it's really interesting because yeah, you do look at the CEO who are overwhelmingly men. You look at a lot of these elite professions which often have men in very powerful positions. But that's not necessarily what we're talking about here, which is the majority of men who actually don't have a four year college degree.

[Richard Reeves]

Right. The inability to see properly across class lines has made too many elite Americans blind to the gendered nature of a lot of what's happening now, especially to kind of men with less economic power, working class men, but also black men too, and Hispanic men much less likely to be in that college educated group right now. And so I'm afraid to say that I think that the kind of fogging up of the glasses that's caused by the separation of the affluent and elite Americans has led them to be skeptical of any claim that any men might be struggling.

[Announcer]

This message comes from BetterHelp as a dad. BetterHelp President Fernando Madera relates to needing flexibility when it comes to scheduling therapy.

[Richard Reeves]

They have kids under 18, so like time is very limited. That's why at BetterHelp our therapists try to have sessions, sometimes at night, depending on the therapist or during the weekend.

[Darren Woods]

So I think that's what we need to tell the parents. You're not alone.

[Richard Reeves]

We can help you out.

[Announcer]

If a flexible schedule would help you. Visit betterhelp.com NPR for 10% off your first month of online therapy.

[Richard Reeves]

This message comes from the National Marine Sanctuary foundation, connecting Americans to their shared maritime heritage. Help keep the ocean coasts and Great Lakes clean, open and accessible to all. Make your gift [e-mail] NPR this message.

[Announcer]

Comes from Capital One. Say hello to stress free subscription management. Easily track block or cancel recurring charges right from the Capital One mobile app. Simple as that. Learn [e-mail] Subscriptions Terms and Conditions apply.

[Darren Woods]

So we've talked a lot about wages and earnings. What about how much men are working? What are the long term trends there?

[Richard Reeves]

The basic trend here is that male labor force participation, the men being in the labor force has gone down. It's gone up for women, as you'd expect and hope. But again, there's a pretty big class story here. And so if we use the same sort of years, 1979 to 2023 that we earlier, you can see again with this huge education gap. So men with a college degree are actually still at a 93% employment rate, but men without a college degree, it's dropped to 81%.

[Darren Woods]

And how much of this is including retirees, people in education, or people taking care of others.

[Richard Reeves]

That's a great question. So again, what I'm doing, I'm using. These are men who are 25 plus since 1979. And so what you've seen is decline for men, but a much bigger decline. So it's like one in five men without a four year college degree are now out of the labor force, where it was only one in 10 in 1979. But the reasons why they're not in the labor force are also very different. So again, it's not just what's the level? Because I was out of the labor force for a few years, but that's because I was looking after my kids.

[Darren Woods]

Yeah, that's not a sign of social decay.

[Announcer]

No.

[Richard Reeves]

Very few people hopefully would have like thought that was a horrible mistake for me to actually raise my own kids for a few years. And it goes huge class gaps here. So when men like me with four year college degree are not in the labor force, the most common reason that they give for that is that they're actually getting more education. And the next most common reason is that they've actually early retired because they've got enough money to do that.

[Darren Woods]

Okay, that's nice.

[Richard Reeves]

And the third is because they're taking care of their family. But if you look at men without a four year college degree, so you're working class men, half of them say the reason they're not in the labor force, they're not even looking for work. This is not unemployed. Again, to be clear here, half of them say it's because they're sick or disabled. That's the single biggest reason why they wouldn't be there. And a pretty small number say it's because they're taking care. It's like just about 1 in 10 say it's taking care of family. And so when we look at what's happening to men and labor force participation, it's very important not just to ask are men in the labor force? But to ask, why aren't they in the labor force if they're not? And again, the class gap here shows pretty strongly that it tends to be sort of health problems that are causing working class men to not be in the labor force. And we've seen a significant rise in problems with drugs, substance abuse, et cetera, as well as other forms of mental health problems.

[Darren Woods]

What are some possible solutions here?

[Richard Reeves]

Well, of course we can try and help those men do better in the labor market. And that's partly about making sure on the demand Side, so infrastructure investment, for example, hugely help working class men, but also on the other side, on the supply side, thinking about much better access to vocational training and learning. I think one of the big problems we've got in the US is four year college degree is not the right path for many people and especially perhaps for many men. But we woefully underinvest in the alternatives. We lag at the bottom of the league table of advanced economies for apprenticeships, for example, vocational training, trade schools. That's all very important too.

[Darren Woods]

Now revitalizing manufacturing and the pathways that lead to more heavy industries like construction and others is one possible solution. The economy is shifting towards a more service sector based economy though. Is there something here around reducing stigma or encouraging more men into industries that traditionally may not have had as many men in it?

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, we've had a lot of emphasis on women into STEM jobs, science, technology, engineering and math. And I'm very interested in getting more men into what I call heal jobs. That's health education, more administrative jobs and those that require more literacy. One of the things that worries me most is that it's not just that there aren't very many men in those traditionally female occupations, like nursing, like teaching, broader healthcare, social work, et cetera. It's that there are fewer and fewer mental health with every passing year. So they're becoming more gendered than they were over time. And so in teaching, for example, the share of K12 teachers that are male has dropped from 33% in the 80s to 23% today. The share of mental health professionals who are male has halved since the 1980s. Nursing has gone up a little bit. Actually, a lot of those men are migrant, they've come from other countries to do that. But nursing's drifted up to about 13% now. But as a general proposition, the occupations that were already quite female have skewed even more female. And so we've actually done a pretty good job of getting more women into traditionally male jobs. We've done a lousy job of helping men into more female jobs such that they've actually gone down. And that's a triple tragedy in my view, because these are growth fields. Healthcare especially is a growth field. So there are jobs there.

[Darren Woods]

As the population ages, there is definitely going to be more health.

[Richard Reeves]

There are jobs there for men, even in some cases for men who don't particularly have very high levels of starting education. So there are. Jobs. Secondly, we have labor shortages in a lot of those areas. We need more workers in those areas. And so it is Bad for the professions that we don't have more men. It's not a good idea to try and solve a labor shortage with only half the labor force, which is what we're doing in those areas. And thirdly, if they're sort of outward facing, more people oriented positions, I think it's just bad to have an underrepresentation of any group, including of men. Like if your dad is in a care home and needs help going to the bathroom, maybe he would prefer a guy to help him with that. If your son needs some mental health care, maybe you would like the option, depending on the issue he's facing, to talk to a counselor who's male as well as, of course, the other way around. And so I think that for all kinds of reasons, the cratering share of men in predominantly female professions is very bad news economically, but also culturally. But I would even go broader than that and say we've actually got to get beyond a world where we are so narrowly defining the contribution of men in terms of the size of their paycheck. Of course we want men to do better in terms of their paychecks and women too. But it's incredibly important that we find ways through policy and through culture to signal to men, you matter as a dad, not just as a breadwinner. You matter as a member of your community. You matter as a volunteer, as a church usher, as a scout leader, as a coach. And so your role as a man in modern society can no longer be and should no longer be narrowly defined. Economically important though, that remains, it has to be more broadly defined in terms of what you're bringing to the tribe, the family, the community. Our tribe still needs you, even if it's in a different and new way. And that's a much bigger challenge than just economic policy. That's a cultural shift that we are only partway through. And I think our failure to complete that shift to a broader and more positive definition of masculinity that breaks free of that narrow frame. I hope what we're experiencing now is the birth pangs of a new and broader masculinity. If we don't get this right, it could be the beginning of a reaction. And I think how we treat what's happening right now will determine which way we go.

[Darren Woods]

You're the author of the Book of Boys and why the Modern Male is Struggling, why it Matters and what to do about it. What's been the response and do you think the conversation has turned at all since you published that?

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, well, I actually struggled to Get a publisher for that book. It was published in 2022. I couldn't really. Yeah, I struggled to get it published and I'd published before, so that was surprising and honestly a bit humiliating. So I then published with the Brookings Institution Press, who'd published me before. And I think the book has landed about as well as one could hope. Very pleased to see it on Barack Obama's 2024 reading list, for example. That was a pleasant surprise. I would say that the awareness that people have that there are some real problems facing many of our boys and men was already there. It was just a bit below the surface. I think what many people felt they needed was permission to just talk about these issues in a way that wouldn't betray their other commitments, in this case, in particular to women and girls. And the reason I was warned against even writing about this subject, let alone talking to you about it and others in the media, is precisely because everyone said if you talk about the problems of boys and men, everyone will think you're a frothing at the mouth conservative. But I said, well, that's the, the very definition of a vicious cycle. If you basically say the only people allowed to talk about boys and men's issues are frothing at the mouth conservatives, you can't really complain that they're the only people talking about it. You've just ceded that ground to them. And I pride myself on being incredibly boring. I have boring charts, boring books. The book is quite boring. My publisher will not thank me for saying this. And actually the think tank I run now, our internal motto is keep it boring. To which my son said, well, you're the man for that job, dad.

[Darren Woods]

Good. Lengthy debates about inflation deflators, I hope.

[Richard Reeves]

I mean, we are super boring. And I mean that in quite a serious sense, which is that there's too much frothy discussion about what's happening to boys and men and not enough hard facts and not enough just good faith, well intentioned, non zero sum treatment of it. And that's my mission now. And it turns out that there are actually lots of people that want to talk about the problems of boys and men, because the problems of boys and men are not the confections of reactionary manosphere figures. They're real. And if you don't deal with real problems, they don't go away. They turn into grievances. And so the way to deal with that is not to wonder why some men might feel some grievance about the way the elite institutions, including the government, have dealt with them. It is to stop it from becoming a grievance in the first place by simply addressing it, acknowledging it, and then addressing it without in any way backing away from your commitments to continue to push for women's rights. It's not a choice. We can do both.

[Darren Woods]

Thanks to Richard Reeves for speaking with me. And as always, thank you for being a Planet Money plus listener. Your ongoing support is one of the best ways to keep our work going. We'll be back with another bonus episode in a couple of weeks. I'm Darian woods and this is npr.

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