Dear Economist,

I am 17 years old and studying A-level economics. A lot of my friends are getting into serious relationships and I’d like to get a girlfriend myself, but I am also concerned about getting distracted from my studies. How does the cost-benefit analysis work out?

Ben, Buckinghamshire

Dear Ben,
A lot of economists have been arguing about this. Social conservatives have recently argued that ”abstinence until marriage builds character and self-control.”
More plausibly, as the economist Joseph Sabia suggests in a forthcoming article, ”if the realised benefits of sexual intercourse are higher than the ex ante anticipated benefits, adolescents may substitute time and energy away from investments in human capital and towards investments in future obtainment of sex.”
In English, that means that sex may be distracting because it is surprisingly fun.
There is little doubt that virgins achieve better grades. Yet is this because sex kills brain cells, or because kids who are already bored at school look harder for ways to amuse themselves? Professor Sabia’s article in Economic Inquiry uses data on the timing of the decision to have sex to show that kids who decide to have sex were already doing badly at school.
Professor Sabia’s results show that a girl does not seem to be distracted at all by losing her virginity - perhaps because young boyfriends are not competent enough to be terribly distracting.
Be careful, though, because it’s different for boys. Professor Sabia finds that deciding to have sex will knock a few percentage points off your grade. That’s my excuse for doing so badly at maths, and I’m sticking to it.