Andrew Yarrow on the problem with young men these days:
We’ve all heard of or had “boomerang” kids moving home with parents, but it is rarely discussed that young men are considerably more likely than young women to fall off the adult track. Sexism and gender-pay gaps are still real, but the circumstances of a large and growing number of Millennial generation men are troubling.
“Millennial men are faring especially poorly,” said David Madland, economic policy director at the Center for American Progress and author of the new book, “Hollowed Out: Why the Economy Doesn’t Work Without a Strong Middle Class,” (University of California Press, June 2015). “Male unemployment is higher than female unemployment, male labor force participation is lower than in prior generations, their hourly wage is less than it was in the early 1970s, and male educational attainment is increasingly slipping behind women, which doesn’t bode well for the future.”
According to the Pew Research Center and the Population Reference Bureau, 2 in 5 18- to 31-year-old men and 1 in 5 25- to 34-year-old men live in their parents’ basements or their childhood bedrooms, compared with 1 in 3 and 1 in 10 women in each of these age groups.
And the solution:
Certainly, a better job market with decent wages would help. So would expanding vocational and adult training. Over the long term, parents need to hover less and do more to foster independence and responsibility. One way to help these young men — and many women — mature, earn a living, and help their country would be to expand AmeriCorps into a universal, required national-service program for all Americans under 25.
Why does the solution to so many problems involve drafting young people into forcibly doing progressives’ bidding?
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