On today's Michigan Daily there is an article about drinking in recession times. They didn't elaborate the"reason" but pointed out the correlation that alcoholic consumption would increase in recession times. The straight-forward story behind it was "life is tough, people use alcohol as a remedy to evade the reality or fight off the depression/boredom". Then how about sex?
Two contrasting hypotheses come to my mind.
1- Depressive mood makes men less enthusiastic about sex or more ED. ---> decreased sex acts'
2- Sex functions similarly as alcohol: people feel bad, bored and under pressure, they make love. A way of "venting".
Thinking this issue further, I guess the sex acts are more likely to show increase in recession times because:
1- More unemployment --> more crimes ---> more rapes (rapes are marginal in sizes though);
2-For sure masturbation will increase in recession times, reason? see No 2 above;
3- Women want to be pregnant so that they have a lower chance to be laid off (verify this in statute!), they have to have sex to be pregnant;
How to verify all these?
1- Proxy variables such as condom sales, lubricant sales? Maybe those are not closely related to what we want to measure.
2- Survey data may be the best and tere must be many on this topic. But to find a time series or comparable cross-sectional survey data might not be easy.
3- Also the birth rates? Nowadays more intercourse don't lead to more births necessarily, can we still judge a "horny period" from a baby boom? At least abortion cases should go hand in hand with sexual conducts....
I will come back to this days later.
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