The Grand Illusion
Too many young men in the United States appear to be in trouble on a number of fronts, especially educational and occupational.
On the educational front, in 1970, men earned 60% of all undergraduate college degrees, but by 2022, men only received 40% of such degrees, while women’s share was 60% and is climbing.
By high school graduation, two-thirds of the students in the top 10 percent of the class, ranked by G.P.A., are girls, while roughly two-thirds of the students at the lowest decile are boys. In 2020, at the 16 top American law schools, not a single one of the flagship law reviews had a man as editor in chief.
On the economic front, matters aren’t any better.
In 1950, 5% of men at the prime working age were unemployed. As of last year, 20% of that same demographic were not working, the highest percentage ever recorded.
One in three American men with only a high school diploma — 10 million men — are now out of the labor force. The biggest drop in employment is among young men aged 25 to 34.
Women’s earnings (for full-time year-round workers) slightly more than doubled from 1960 to 2021 in real dollars, compared with a 29% growth for men, and adjusted for inflation, most men in the U.S. today earn less than they did in 1979, suggesting that the gender wage gap (17% at present) is largely concentrated in the high-paid professional fields, and is likely much higher than 17% in those fields.
The top ten to fifteen percent of American males are doing just fine; they still control and monopolize the majority of highest-paying positions in the U.S., but below that level, most men are comparatively worse off than their fathers.
Nor are matters much better on the social front.
Today, 18-to- 34-year-old men spend more time playing video games daily than 12-to- 17-year-old boys.
Men account for 40% (or less) of new college graduates, but also account for roughly 70% of drug overdose deaths and more than 80% of gun violence deaths.
Nearly half of all young adults are single: 34% of women, and a whopping 63% percent of men, partly because more younger women are dating and marrying older men, or refusing to “settle” for just any male. Surveys suggest that’s because they find too many men their own age to be unsuitable and/or are reluctant to marry someone who isn’t doing at least close to as well as they are.
Theories abound as to the causes of this change, but underlying all those postulated causes is one other basic factor – for the first time in history, the need for physical strength in the high-tech occupational world is comparatively minimal, and as such, pays less than ever before.
As for subsidiary causes, I tend to believe there’s a devil’s brew of factors, beginning with the loss of higher-paid, semi-skilled manufacturing jobs in the United States, compounded by the excessive touting of higher education as the answer to lack of opportunity and the stigmatization of technical skills – electricians, plumbers, machine tool operators. Add to that the loss of suitable of male role models due to discrimination, excessive incarceration, the loss of entry-level skilled trade jobs, the appeal of video games and social media, as well as other factors.
And then there’s something I almost hate to mention, but there’s also the laziness factor. A certain percentage of male human beings seem to be designed so that they look for the easiest way to do what’s required, and for some, that applies to survival. So they take the easiest courses in high school and college and find the easiest way to pass, and if they can’t find a job, they may return to their parents’ basement. Or some may see dealing drugs as much easier and more profitable than physical labor or long hours. How many are there? Well, statistics say that there are more than 10 million able-bodied American males who aren’t seeking a job on a long-term basis – even when jobs are available.
Or, put another way, the “lion” model hasn’t worked all that well in human society, and it especially doesn’t work well in a higher tech society.
These statistics are indeed sobering if looked at as a binary male/female contrast. I don’t doubt that many of the possible contributing factors you have mentioned are in play. However, there’s also another very large change since the 50s/60s era. That change is how families are now structured with double incomes and more role swapping/sharing. That was not the case in previous generations. So, the ‘taking’ of jobs/positions/primary income earnings by women may be a net benefit to the family unit but a net degradation of the male earning statistics. Just a thought.
A correlated statistic is home size. The average square footage for homes built in the 50s/60s is much smaller (about half as I once looked up) than those built in the last couple decades. That money has to come from somewhere.
Yea, I’m fairly confident that the labour force in the 50s was probably only 10% women, while now it’s likely more like 45%. So the market as a whole has grown as the population doubled, while men’s overall share has dropped to compensate.
On the single front – raising a child is extremely expensive, and home ownership is out of reach for most. Why hurry to reproduce when you could be earning money towards your goals instead? The relationship gap is also likely maturity oriented – a woman has it drilled into her that pregnancy will change her life and it’s on her to dodge the consequences. A man considers it an unlikely side effect to be avoided. It’s not at all an even playing field.
Re: the laziness factor: We had the ultimate example of that here in the UK with our prime-minister-before-last, a man so convinced that he was clever that he didn’t need to prepare or study or read a brief before speaking. Fired more than once from journalism jobs for making stuff up instead of researching, he displayed a general indifference to facts or the truth, but still got elected. But I guess you in the States know how that feels.
Looking at the issue as “Why boys aren’t succeeding in school?” only gets us so far. I think the question of “Why do young women feel the need to do well in school?” would show us that its a rational response to sexism. Women need these credentials more than men. High need school educated (white) men make as much as college educated women; college educated men probably make as much as women with master’s degrees. I also read that bachelor’s degrees started to be given 50%-50% to men and women in 1982, just before Columbia went co-ed and right after Title IX. Women were going to college in high numbers despite being “held back”, which shows us there’s nothing new about the phenomenon.
Anecdotally, reading about the women who were part of the first co-ed Harvard Law class–one father told his daughter that if she wanted to be an attorney, she needed to go to the best school or not at all. Its easier for an individual woman to go to college than to fight an uphill battle of integrating the skilled trades, so I suspect this is why. Women pour into fields where other women have blazed a path, and then once a field becomes “female” the status and pay of that field go down. Think psychology or biology–with young men considering biology the softest science. In turn, getting a job in these fields requires post-collegiate education.