In all 38 member countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Reeves says there are now more young women than young men with bachelor’s degrees. Forty per cent of 18-year-old women in Britain head off to college, compared to 29 per cent of their male peers. That gap is one of many warning signs of a male malaise, especially for boys and men at the lower rungs on the economic and social ladders. “Things are worse than I thought,” says Reeves, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “I knew some of the headlines about...