The cratering economic prospects of white men raised poor

Chetty's latest databomb highlights disturbing trends about class in America

Drawing attention to the challenges of boys and men is what Ezra Klein brilliantly describes as a “narrative violation”. In progressive circles especially, the idea of male suffering is almost an oxymoron. How can it be, in a patriarchal society, that boys and men might be the primary victims of any economic, social or cultural change? Surely it's a category error.

Obviously, I think this is empirically wrong. I’d hardly have set up the American Institute for Boys and Men otherwise. But it’s also morally wrong to exclude a priori any group from our potential empathy and care. It sets up a dangerous zero-sum framing, in which either women and girls are struggling, or men and boys are, but never both. These artificial barriers mean that the mere acknowledgement of male-specific challenges is wrongly seen as at best a distraction from the cause of women and girls, at worst as a betrayal.

Things get more difficult still if the boys or men in question are white. If the idea of men struggling is a narrative violation, the idea of white men struggling is even more so.

I have stated strongly, and repeatedly (including here, here and here) that Black boys and men face distinct barriers in the U.S. not despite being male but because of being male. But there are some domains in which some white men are at the sharpest end of the stick. They are, for example, at a much higher risk of suicide. Especially in the early stages, the opioid crisis hit white men hardest.

To be clear, I’m not talking about all white men here. On most measures, white men at the top of economic ladder, and white boys raised in affluent homes, are doing as well or even better than ever. But the same is not true of white boys and men at the other end of the class ladder. On almost every measure, they are actually doing worse than ever: earning less, working less, in worse health, less likely to marry, more likely to be childless, and living shorter lives.

Upper middle class Americans often fail to see the crisis unfolding for so many boys and men, because they don’t see it as acutely in their own homes, communities and workplaces.

The class gap leads to an awareness gap, which leads to an empathy gap.

The growing class gap among whites

A new paper from Opportunity Insights, led by Raj Chetty, dropped today. This is always a major event in the policy and academic world, and rightly so. For those who don’t know OI’s work, they use data based on tax records (anonymized of course) across generations to examine economic and social outcomes. When it comes to tracking changing patterns of opportunity and mobility in the U.S., there is simply no better place to look.

The new paper compares outcomes for two cohorts: those born in 1978 and in 1992. It is a detailed and important study. One of the most striking charts shows the employment rates of 27 year-olds, born in each cohort, based on their parents income rank (from lowest on the left to highest on the right), with Black and white outcomes shown separately:

The overall picture is clear. People raised in lower-income homes are less likely to be working at the age of 27. (The drop at the very top of the distribution is likely about some of this group still being in education).

But there has been a rather dramatic reversal in the relationship between income and race. For the 1978 birth cohort, employment rates for those raised poor were much higher for whites; for the 1992 cohort, the pattern reverses. Today, Black Americans raised in lower-income families are more likely than whites raised in the same economic circumstances to be working.

Crucially, employment rates for whites raised poor haven’t just risen more slowly: they’ve dropped significantly. The data in the chart above is for both genders. But if you dig into the underlying datasets (which, God bless them Opportunity Insights always make available), you can see the patterns for men and women.

In the chart below, I show employment rates for the 1978 and 1992 birth cohorts raised in households at various right at the bottom of the income (the 1st percentile), at the 25th percentile (which is close to the poverty line), and at the 50th percentile, i.e. the median. (There’s not much change in the top half of the distribution, which is why I don’t show it).

The big changes here are improvements for Black men and Black women raised in poor households; but a stark deterioration in the employment chances of white men raised poor. It’s obviously good news that the employment outcomes for Black men have improved, even as they continue to lag well behind Black women. But it’s bad news that employment rates have gotten so much worse for white men raised in low-income homes. It is, however, consistent with the data on the decline in flourishing among lower-income men in general.

I’ve focused here on employment, where the story is perhaps most striking. For sure the AIBM team and I will be digging into this data some more over coming weeks; but even a cursory glance at the datasets shows that across a wide range of measures, including mortality, marriage rates and income, outcomes have worsened for white Americans, and especially men, raised in low-income families and struggling communities.

It’s worth noting that on many of these measures, there has been a deterioration in outcomes for Black men and some Black women too, even if not quite as stark as that for low-income whites. And crucially, Black men and women are much more likely to have been raised in low-income households in the first place; about three times as likely according to previous work I’ve done.

The class gap widens for whites

Looking at the findings through a class lens, it is clear that upper-middle class white families continue to flourish and to ensure that their kids flourish too. Rich white parents are doing an even better job of setting their children up to maintain their position in the social and economic hierarchy.

One way to look at the intergenerational nature of class gaps is to look where people raised in families in a particular income quintile end up as adults. The chart below shows where whites raised in poor and affluent households (the bottom and top fifths of the income distribution) end up as adults, for the 1978 and 1992 birth cohort:

Among the 1978 cohort, 25% of those raised in bottom-quintile families remained there as adults: for the 1992 cohort, the share stuck on that bottom rung was 30%. There is more stickiness at the top, too. For the 1978 cohort, 34% of those raised in top-quintile families stayed at the top: for the 1992 cohort, that share was 38%.

What about Black Americans? The good news is that there looks to have been a slight improvement in social mobility. Black Americans born in 1978 and raised in low income families had a 40% of remaining in that bottom quintile as adults; for the 1992 those odds had improved to 34%. The bad news is that mobility rates still remain lower for Black than for white Americans.

More opportunity hoarding

Overall, the picture is clear: intergenerational mobility has worsened among whites. There’s much less upward mobility from the bottom. But there’s also less downward mobility from the top. The “glass floor” holding up the children of affluent parents is even more solid than in the past.

I don’t want to be that guy who says I told you so. But you know, I did tell you so.

Back in 2017, I wrote a book called Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It. I added opinion pieces with titles like “Stop Pretending You’re Not Rich” and “The Glass Floor Problem”. The basic message was that the class system in the U.S. ruthlessly perpetuates privilege at the top, not least through a deeply unfair education system, especially in higher ed, and a rigged housing market.

It seems that affluent families at the top of the distribution are now doing an even better job of setting their own kids up for success, and dominating the opportunity structure. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, opportunities are narrowing and lives are getting harder.

So the class chasm in America is only getting wider, especially for whites. For me, that probably ought to have been the main headline from this latest Chetty et al paper: Relative social mobility in the U.S., already not great, has gotten even worse.

People who say the American Dream is getting harder to achieve are telling the truth.

Sometimes, white men need help too

But behind the main headline is another one that cannot be brushed under the carpet: the cratering economic outcomes for white men from poorer homes. This fact may sit uncomfortably within standard narratives about inequalities by race and gender. But it remains a fact nonetheless.

The decline in the life prospects of white men from poor backgrounds has been charted in recent years by a number of scholars. But the new data from Chetty’s team, based on such a large dataset, is proof of the most dramatic kind.

Too many people think that poorer white men are having a temper tantrum against modernity in general and the rise of women in particular. Books like Angry White Men and White Rural Rage express this general view.

The idea that some white men might be facing real, hard, actual problems is an unpalatable one to many. Too often it has been been ignored or explained away. Given this new research, that is no longer an option.