The Risk Deficit

I recently posted on an article that suggested prostitution is a normal good, and when income falls men spend more time with their wives.

What about income and adultery? Lucy Kellaway at the Financial Times explains:

Last week, I had lunch with John Quelch, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, and asked what he thought it all meant. Why is it that so many senior business people are responding to recession with adultery?

He said that, in a recession, people wanted hugs. This struck me as a pretty feeble explanation. Surely there are easier ways of getting hugs than putting one’s marriage on the line? Hugging one’s children or – if one is desperate – even one’s spouse might seem easier and safer.

He said that this was just the point: that the risk was the lure. That bankers are suffering from a risk deficit: their working lives have been derisked compulsorily and this could be a way of compensating by adding risk to their private lives.

My emphasis.