Men's Underwear Index

Boxers, briefs, or boxer briefs? Doesn’t matter; if men stop buying ‘em, that means the economy is declining. At least, that’s the thinking behind the Men’s Underwear Index, a theory promoted by Federal Reserve guru Alan Greenspan back in the ‘70s. He argued that sales of men’s underwear go down in times of economic decline and increase when the economy is doing well.

So does this theory hold water? Some critics say no. They say that men are more into fancy underthings than they used to be, which means they’re less of a flexible necessity (no pun intended). In other words, men are less inclined to hold onto those Fruit of the Looms until the last thread gives way than they were in the 1970s when the Men’s Underwear Index was created. This change in consumer trends, they say, makes the underwear index a lot less predictable.