Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done

going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today is August 7, 2024, and my guest is Richard Reeves. He is the president and founder of the American Institute for Boys and

Men, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is Of Boys and Men,

why the Modern Mail is Stru is struggling, why it matters and what to do about it.

Today we're going to talk about boys and men and the challenges they're facing in this moment.

Richard, welcome to EconTock.

Thank you for having me on Russ. I'm really looking forward to this.

Now you highlight three challenges that face men and sometimes boys in education in the workplace and the family.

I'd like to go through those one at a time and it's reasonable let's start with

education when it's boys mostly.

What's what's the crisis in boys and young men's education?

To everybody's surprise, there's a very large gender gap in education now in every

advanced economy I'll talk mostly about the US but with boys and men behind

obviously we used to think about gender gaps that go the other way and for a long time it was that way, but boys and men are behind girls and women throughout the education system and falling further and further behind.

And that's particularly true if they're from a low income

community or household and or if they're black.

But just to put a few data points on the table,

because I know you'll enjoy getting some empirical specificity here.

Boys are behind girls throughout school, especially throughout K-12 education,

especially in subjects like English and literacy.

So in the in the medium school district in the US, boys are almost a grade level

...