Does this mean I should pursue a 4-year degree? Serious question. This sounds to me like your quality of work in supporting yourself causes a drastic effect on your living satisfaction.
The institute of refrigeration have been actively promoting, work experience weeks for girls recently, this was celebrated on linked in.
I would not support an initiative that excluded girls, why would I support an initiative that excludes boys?
I repaired an air conditioning system at a sewage treatment plant the other day, no prizes for guessing the sex of the people that deal with treating our raw sewage.
Maybe that’s just the way it always was, but this narrative regarding male privilege, ‘the cat that got the cream’ is getting tiresome, and certainly very far removed from reality.
Why doesn't the report cover incarceration rates? Isn't that a huge problem in the USA? Don't we have the highest rates of incarceration of any civilization that has ever existed on the planet? That said, thank you for caring about these men and putting out these reports.
But that's not right. They are human and their situation deserves to be shown. By treating that population as invisible it is just writing them off. The citizenry needs to know they are spending money on housing all those people, giving them free health care (something they don't even give themselves), and providing this work force for corporations and billionaires to exploit. I'm disappointed this report chose to hide that. Those people are citizens and just because our constitution creates incentives to incarcerate people doesn't mean they should be left out of this report. I'm interested in hearing from Richard Reeves why he didn't include them as it goes to the whole credibility of this enterprise.
Fair enough on official stats, but this is a think tank report. We can't pretend those men don't exist. They do! What about them? Without including them, it gives a rosier picture of the state of American men than warranted, right?
How can you claim Vivek works tirelessly to improve the loneliness epidemic in America when he supported lockdowns? Perhaps the biggest accelerant you could ever pour on loneliness…
"It really stunned me to realize that young working class men (aged 25 to 34) are more likely to die than middle-aged non-working class men (aged 45 to 54)."
The same is true for working class women. The working class is men AND women. Policy that would provide better economic prospects for working class people in general would benefit boys and men to a greater degree because they were more hard hit by Neoliberalism:
WC men were already fully employed when the first bombs from Neoliberalism fell. Look at your earnings graph. WC men in 1979 made more money that WC women in 2022, WC women made much less than that. Thus, there was an incentive for WC women to move from 1979-type women’s work to 2022-type women’s work, so they did, as your employment graph shows. There was no such incentive for WC men. They remained in 1979-type men’s work or opted out entirely as shown by declining employment rates.
Under the New Deal order (1933-1973) unskilled wage levels rose with economic growth. During this time a young man could provide an income that allowed for a rising living standard by simply holding down a job even if he never advanced career-wise. This made him a better marital prospect and led to high rates of marriage.
As the data shows, there are a lot of lonely single men in our society. I'm wondering if and how this data links to or compares with the data on mass shooters.
Part of the loneliness epidemic is that they don't emphasize family. Maybe they don't have friends but they have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins that they could bond with. There is also volunteer work. There's a lot of old, sick lonely people in ALFs and nursing homes who would love a visit from lonely single men. Friendships can bloom there.
Hola, te escribo desde España. Me parece muy bueno tu artículo. Me sorprende que haya periodistas en EEUU que traten el tema del abismo de clase, y más cómo la haces tú, aportando tal cantidad de datos. Solo un detalle. La pertenencia a la clase obrera no depende del nivel de estudios, sino del lugar que se ocupa en la cadena de producción. Por lo demás. Tu artículo es muy clarificador.
I am sure the stats are right. But of my three sons only one has a university education. One has a trade. My youngest has neither. But the youngest is far more successful than the other two. The one with a degree is the least successful in every way.
Good. Yeah, Dubai. Apparently extremely young people, including teens, who have no prior knowledge or experience in real estate (or anything really), are making a fortune in "real estate" there. Basically Dubai real estate is a front for mafia and underground money. So either they are getting lured there under false pretenses or they go in knowing.
I have seen very little influence of criminal money in RE development. It isn’t cash quick enough. Maybe owning hotels or casinos. That aspect of real estate. But condo or rental construction is pretty clean. Hard to launder money in real estate. Not impossible. But it doesn’t lend itself to laundering.
Yes and no. The fact there are so many anecdotal pieces of evidence that don’t fit the narrative means there are other factors not being looked at that might be more important. I read an article by a black academic. Black males do great….provided they are raised by a Mom and a Dad. An intact family. He said no one talks about this one simple factor which erases most of all differences in outcomes. So why do many do so well without a degree? Most of the big American success stories tend to be degree less men.
As Richard Reeves should say: On average, black males raised in an intact family do better than black males raised by a single mother. Reeves also has the joke that just because males, on average, are taller than females, that does not mean that all males are taller than all females.
One of the interesting points that Richard Reeves mentions occasionally is that black females have done much better in higher education and in having white collar careers than black males.
That is a very good question. It has been reported that white males raised by parents with only a high school education have better test scores and school completion rates than black males with college educated parents.
Add it all up: Very many working class men are being literally worked to death. (Note the dramatic numbers of working class men not in workforce due to disability or illness; note the dramatic deaths of despair in this group.) This is a tale as old as time. Working class men are treated as if they are dispensable. Their bodies are used for the profit of others. So, while these are the men who are very literally building & maintaining our communities, we -- as a society -- are not giving them what they need to thrive. And then we wonder why working class males aren't getting married?
Thanks for this and your book which I will put on my reading list. It is said that politics, and by extension, policy is downstream of culture. Culture has told boys they are toxic and shameful. That their instincts are wrong and crude. That they must be highly educated to have value and that their proclivity for rough play should be medicated.
I would be interested to know what government policies, specifically, you are proposing to address these issues. For a variety of reasons, I am skeptical of “government action” for the simple reason that governments don’t raise children, people do. The implication that government programs are effective at dealing with these issues may sell books but doesn’t address the underlying lack of meaning that these men, and indeed many men across the class spectrum, acutely feel.
Boys are, in general, more rambunctious and less compliant than girls. Since feminine behaviors now map as “normal”, boys who do not behave well are referred for prescriptions of ADD and ADHD drugs instead of allowing them to just grow out of it a bit.
But school has always been a place where sitting at a desk and focusing is necessary. There have always been some kids who struggled more than others with that but if you listen to teachers there's an increase in wildly unacceptable behavior today compared to even a decade or 2 ago. It may be that some kids are prescribed drugs they don't need, but it's not merely because of "rough play".
Anyway, teachers are dropping out like flies and I don't blame them.
Sure, children today, for a broad segment of the population, are directed toward college immediately following high school. This is misaligned with the natural tendencies of many boys who, all else equal, might prefer to be tradesmen or pursue other career paths outside of 16+ years of education.
What are “the specific challenges faced by boys and men?” You refer to income inequality, but that strikes me as more an effect than a cause. You avoid the most likely cause, which is a cultural disparaging of traditional masculinity, and the most likely solution, which is to encourage marriage. You call attention to the problem, but you really are not identifying causes or proposing any solution. You seem afraid of somehow offending the prevailing culture.
Can you elaborate on how encouraging marriage would help? People get married everyday, yet here we are. Also, the demographic with the greatest marriage longevity in USA is college educated professionals.
Hi, well written, but a critique I would, respectfully, have is that I think it should be noted that there is quite a large amount of variability within these groupings, so much so that I'm not sure they actually have much meaning as broad categories within the contexts your referring to...
Thanks for the data, depressing though it is. One move that might make a substantial difference would be a rejuvenation of vocational education at the secondary school level. I recently retired as a teacher after a long career. I worked for a huge urban district for most of it - all but the middle 8 years out of 35 total. The demise of voc. ed. was perhaps the biggest change affected by the powers that be during that span. There were plausible-seeming reasons and rationales offered along the way, and little resistance. But it did drain public schools of class offerings that had traditionally attracted teenage boys. One powerful argument for de-emphasis was that ‘shop’ classes had been used as a medium of institutional racism, as a dumping ground for black and brown kids who couldn’t be as easily warehoused in other classes. Though there was an element of truth in this, it should never have been sufficient as a reason to completely abandon course work that incorporated strong immersion in productive hands-on learning. The relative dearth of that is the hole in our present system that short-changes males. The good news is that the opportunity for a snazzy do-over is wide open. And there are existing programs that deliver a combination of old-fashioned manual skill-building with Century 21 tech. They need further support and advocacy from the highest levels of educational policy-making. I would never count on Harris or Trump to even take notice, but it seems like a viable goal for Walz or Vance, given their rural, working-class roots. There is well-paid work out there for young men who have some interest and a little bit of training, and it seems as if many a pathetic fate could be averted by staying busy on the job. Question for thought: how many people have better long-term prospects today than a young electrician?
Thank you for your years of teaching and I hope you can enjoy a well earned retirement. In my boys public middle school they ALL really enjoyed shop but another kid nearly lost a finger. The insurance gets expensive for the districts.
Honest question after 27 years of training students in a technical high school-How many graduated from high school a LICENSED electrician with those excellent long-term prospects? Our technical high school does not graduate a SINGLE licensed electrician, plumber, HVAC technician or licensed practical nurse. They remove those students from the college prep classes, are no longer responsible for getting them ready for further education and when the students graduate they can go to trade school or nursing school...just like someone that did college prep in high school...except these young people have no flexibility for the future. Why can't kids get a head start in technical high school? Why would we send them to another school and rob them of future choice? You would know, I suspect-when did this change in the U.S. as I heard that years ago they were able to begin journeyman/apprenticeship in high school? What can we do to fix this?
Thanks for your good wishes. Liability is a huge part of the equation that has undone voc.ed. But the update - including improved safety equipment, such as blade-stoppers on saws - would undoubtedly diminish such risk. Overall curriculum decisions are primarily district-level decisions. But the biggest impediment are risk-averse, unimaginative administrators, few of whom have any real experience with voc. ed. - another big change since days of yore. Frankly, I think the best course on the individual level is to encourage a parallel approach: a blend of training program courses and more traditional academic course offerings as a requirement. Ultimately a young person needs a valuable skill set as an entry into the adult economy, but long-term their prospects will be much enhanced by their intellectual development, hence the need for cultivating it. Wide and varied independent reading is the key.
Your well thought out response, grounded in a wealth of experience leaves me hoping you will not enjoy your retirement as much as I initially hoped-we all NEED you to advocate for this meaningful change. As you do not currently have a role in the school, you would not be advocating for a larger slice of the pie for yourself and I really do hope you can get the word out to young people everywhere-they can gain worthwhile skills and receive a well rounded formal education. Please speak up-often....which means not enjoying your retirement as much.
Does this mean I should pursue a 4-year degree? Serious question. This sounds to me like your quality of work in supporting yourself causes a drastic effect on your living satisfaction.
The Hi-Vis vest, paradoxically has become a vest of invisibility....
The institute of refrigeration have been actively promoting, work experience weeks for girls recently, this was celebrated on linked in.
I would not support an initiative that excluded girls, why would I support an initiative that excludes boys?
I repaired an air conditioning system at a sewage treatment plant the other day, no prizes for guessing the sex of the people that deal with treating our raw sewage.
Maybe that’s just the way it always was, but this narrative regarding male privilege, ‘the cat that got the cream’ is getting tiresome, and certainly very far removed from reality.
It's time to bring back the traditional ashram.
Why doesn't the report cover incarceration rates? Isn't that a huge problem in the USA? Don't we have the highest rates of incarceration of any civilization that has ever existed on the planet? That said, thank you for caring about these men and putting out these reports.
Because those in prison are not counted as part of the work force.
But that's not right. They are human and their situation deserves to be shown. By treating that population as invisible it is just writing them off. The citizenry needs to know they are spending money on housing all those people, giving them free health care (something they don't even give themselves), and providing this work force for corporations and billionaires to exploit. I'm disappointed this report chose to hide that. Those people are citizens and just because our constitution creates incentives to incarcerate people doesn't mean they should be left out of this report. I'm interested in hearing from Richard Reeves why he didn't include them as it goes to the whole credibility of this enterprise.
One needs to go back and read how the economic numbers are calculated. Those in the military are also not counted in the work force.
Fair enough on official stats, but this is a think tank report. We can't pretend those men don't exist. They do! What about them? Without including them, it gives a rosier picture of the state of American men than warranted, right?
How can you claim Vivek works tirelessly to improve the loneliness epidemic in America when he supported lockdowns? Perhaps the biggest accelerant you could ever pour on loneliness…
"It really stunned me to realize that young working class men (aged 25 to 34) are more likely to die than middle-aged non-working class men (aged 45 to 54)."
The same is true for working class women. The working class is men AND women. Policy that would provide better economic prospects for working class people in general would benefit boys and men to a greater degree because they were more hard hit by Neoliberalism:
WC men were already fully employed when the first bombs from Neoliberalism fell. Look at your earnings graph. WC men in 1979 made more money that WC women in 2022, WC women made much less than that. Thus, there was an incentive for WC women to move from 1979-type women’s work to 2022-type women’s work, so they did, as your employment graph shows. There was no such incentive for WC men. They remained in 1979-type men’s work or opted out entirely as shown by declining employment rates.
Under the New Deal order (1933-1973) unskilled wage levels rose with economic growth. During this time a young man could provide an income that allowed for a rising living standard by simply holding down a job even if he never advanced career-wise. This made him a better marital prospect and led to high rates of marriage.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/seven-and-a-half-cents#:~:text=million%20homeless%20Americans-,.,under%20SC%20culture%20and%20the%20economic%20policy%20that%20enabled%20it.,-Marriage%20rates%20for
This is just one more reason for going back to something like what he once had:
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/why-neoliberalism-should-be-replaced/comments
As the data shows, there are a lot of lonely single men in our society. I'm wondering if and how this data links to or compares with the data on mass shooters.
Part of the loneliness epidemic is that they don't emphasize family. Maybe they don't have friends but they have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins that they could bond with. There is also volunteer work. There's a lot of old, sick lonely people in ALFs and nursing homes who would love a visit from lonely single men. Friendships can bloom there.
Actually, it is affecting men with a degree as well.
Hola, te escribo desde España. Me parece muy bueno tu artículo. Me sorprende que haya periodistas en EEUU que traten el tema del abismo de clase, y más cómo la haces tú, aportando tal cantidad de datos. Solo un detalle. La pertenencia a la clase obrera no depende del nivel de estudios, sino del lugar que se ocupa en la cadena de producción. Por lo demás. Tu artículo es muy clarificador.
I am sure the stats are right. But of my three sons only one has a university education. One has a trade. My youngest has neither. But the youngest is far more successful than the other two. The one with a degree is the least successful in every way.
Is he a social media influencer? TikToker? Youtuber? Life coach? Ayurvedic practitioner?
Real estate developer. As am I.
OK. But nothing to do with Dubai, right?
Nope. Dubai?
Good. Yeah, Dubai. Apparently extremely young people, including teens, who have no prior knowledge or experience in real estate (or anything really), are making a fortune in "real estate" there. Basically Dubai real estate is a front for mafia and underground money. So either they are getting lured there under false pretenses or they go in knowing.
I have seen very little influence of criminal money in RE development. It isn’t cash quick enough. Maybe owning hotels or casinos. That aspect of real estate. But condo or rental construction is pretty clean. Hard to launder money in real estate. Not impossible. But it doesn’t lend itself to laundering.
Remember, anecdotes do not mean anything. And one would have to add many details that one does not want to do to make the anecdote meaningful.
Yes and no. The fact there are so many anecdotal pieces of evidence that don’t fit the narrative means there are other factors not being looked at that might be more important. I read an article by a black academic. Black males do great….provided they are raised by a Mom and a Dad. An intact family. He said no one talks about this one simple factor which erases most of all differences in outcomes. So why do many do so well without a degree? Most of the big American success stories tend to be degree less men.
As Richard Reeves should say: On average, black males raised in an intact family do better than black males raised by a single mother. Reeves also has the joke that just because males, on average, are taller than females, that does not mean that all males are taller than all females.
One of the interesting points that Richard Reeves mentions occasionally is that black females have done much better in higher education and in having white collar careers than black males.
"On average, black males raised in an intact family do better than black males raised by a single mother. "
Do they do better than white males raised by a single mother?
That is a very good question. It has been reported that white males raised by parents with only a high school education have better test scores and school completion rates than black males with college educated parents.
And how is it for black females?
Add it all up: Very many working class men are being literally worked to death. (Note the dramatic numbers of working class men not in workforce due to disability or illness; note the dramatic deaths of despair in this group.) This is a tale as old as time. Working class men are treated as if they are dispensable. Their bodies are used for the profit of others. So, while these are the men who are very literally building & maintaining our communities, we -- as a society -- are not giving them what they need to thrive. And then we wonder why working class males aren't getting married?
Would more or better unions help?
No. Union jobs have the same probs as non union jobs. This problem though has been greatly reduced through good work safe rules.
The number of wrecked tradespeople, physically damaged, is huge. It is better now. But old school trades were all in pain by the time they were fifty.
Thanks for this and your book which I will put on my reading list. It is said that politics, and by extension, policy is downstream of culture. Culture has told boys they are toxic and shameful. That their instincts are wrong and crude. That they must be highly educated to have value and that their proclivity for rough play should be medicated.
I would be interested to know what government policies, specifically, you are proposing to address these issues. For a variety of reasons, I am skeptical of “government action” for the simple reason that governments don’t raise children, people do. The implication that government programs are effective at dealing with these issues may sell books but doesn’t address the underlying lack of meaning that these men, and indeed many men across the class spectrum, acutely feel.
"That they must be highly educated to have value and that their proclivity for rough play should be medicated."
Can you elaborate on this?
Boys are, in general, more rambunctious and less compliant than girls. Since feminine behaviors now map as “normal”, boys who do not behave well are referred for prescriptions of ADD and ADHD drugs instead of allowing them to just grow out of it a bit.
But school has always been a place where sitting at a desk and focusing is necessary. There have always been some kids who struggled more than others with that but if you listen to teachers there's an increase in wildly unacceptable behavior today compared to even a decade or 2 ago. It may be that some kids are prescribed drugs they don't need, but it's not merely because of "rough play".
Anyway, teachers are dropping out like flies and I don't blame them.
Sure, children today, for a broad segment of the population, are directed toward college immediately following high school. This is misaligned with the natural tendencies of many boys who, all else equal, might prefer to be tradesmen or pursue other career paths outside of 16+ years of education.
Ok but what does that have to do with "rough play" and your assertion that it is medicated?
What are “the specific challenges faced by boys and men?” You refer to income inequality, but that strikes me as more an effect than a cause. You avoid the most likely cause, which is a cultural disparaging of traditional masculinity, and the most likely solution, which is to encourage marriage. You call attention to the problem, but you really are not identifying causes or proposing any solution. You seem afraid of somehow offending the prevailing culture.
Can you elaborate on how encouraging marriage would help? People get married everyday, yet here we are. Also, the demographic with the greatest marriage longevity in USA is college educated professionals.
💯
Hi, well written, but a critique I would, respectfully, have is that I think it should be noted that there is quite a large amount of variability within these groupings, so much so that I'm not sure they actually have much meaning as broad categories within the contexts your referring to...
Thanks for the data, depressing though it is. One move that might make a substantial difference would be a rejuvenation of vocational education at the secondary school level. I recently retired as a teacher after a long career. I worked for a huge urban district for most of it - all but the middle 8 years out of 35 total. The demise of voc. ed. was perhaps the biggest change affected by the powers that be during that span. There were plausible-seeming reasons and rationales offered along the way, and little resistance. But it did drain public schools of class offerings that had traditionally attracted teenage boys. One powerful argument for de-emphasis was that ‘shop’ classes had been used as a medium of institutional racism, as a dumping ground for black and brown kids who couldn’t be as easily warehoused in other classes. Though there was an element of truth in this, it should never have been sufficient as a reason to completely abandon course work that incorporated strong immersion in productive hands-on learning. The relative dearth of that is the hole in our present system that short-changes males. The good news is that the opportunity for a snazzy do-over is wide open. And there are existing programs that deliver a combination of old-fashioned manual skill-building with Century 21 tech. They need further support and advocacy from the highest levels of educational policy-making. I would never count on Harris or Trump to even take notice, but it seems like a viable goal for Walz or Vance, given their rural, working-class roots. There is well-paid work out there for young men who have some interest and a little bit of training, and it seems as if many a pathetic fate could be averted by staying busy on the job. Question for thought: how many people have better long-term prospects today than a young electrician?
Thank you for your years of teaching and I hope you can enjoy a well earned retirement. In my boys public middle school they ALL really enjoyed shop but another kid nearly lost a finger. The insurance gets expensive for the districts.
Honest question after 27 years of training students in a technical high school-How many graduated from high school a LICENSED electrician with those excellent long-term prospects? Our technical high school does not graduate a SINGLE licensed electrician, plumber, HVAC technician or licensed practical nurse. They remove those students from the college prep classes, are no longer responsible for getting them ready for further education and when the students graduate they can go to trade school or nursing school...just like someone that did college prep in high school...except these young people have no flexibility for the future. Why can't kids get a head start in technical high school? Why would we send them to another school and rob them of future choice? You would know, I suspect-when did this change in the U.S. as I heard that years ago they were able to begin journeyman/apprenticeship in high school? What can we do to fix this?
Thanks for your good wishes. Liability is a huge part of the equation that has undone voc.ed. But the update - including improved safety equipment, such as blade-stoppers on saws - would undoubtedly diminish such risk. Overall curriculum decisions are primarily district-level decisions. But the biggest impediment are risk-averse, unimaginative administrators, few of whom have any real experience with voc. ed. - another big change since days of yore. Frankly, I think the best course on the individual level is to encourage a parallel approach: a blend of training program courses and more traditional academic course offerings as a requirement. Ultimately a young person needs a valuable skill set as an entry into the adult economy, but long-term their prospects will be much enhanced by their intellectual development, hence the need for cultivating it. Wide and varied independent reading is the key.
Your well thought out response, grounded in a wealth of experience leaves me hoping you will not enjoy your retirement as much as I initially hoped-we all NEED you to advocate for this meaningful change. As you do not currently have a role in the school, you would not be advocating for a larger slice of the pie for yourself and I really do hope you can get the word out to young people everywhere-they can gain worthwhile skills and receive a well rounded formal education. Please speak up-often....which means not enjoying your retirement as much.