A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau sheds light on how the continued economic insecurity of many Americans has shaped people’s thoughts and behaviors in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The bureau finds that 41 percent of men ages 25 to 34 were poor in 2016, more than one-and-a-half times the number from 40 years ago. And while young men still have a higher median income than young women, it’s the women who are making more substantial economic gains.
“Since 1975, young men have swelled the ranks at the bottom of the income distribution. Some 41 percent of all men aged 25 to 34 have incomes less than $30,000 today [in 2015 dollars], up from 25 percent in 1975,” the report stated.
“Growth at the bottom, and to a smaller extent the top, came at the expense of the middle,” it continued. “Between 1975 and 2016, the share of young men with incomes in the middle ($30,000 to $59,999) fell from 49 percent to 35 percent, while the share at the very top ($100,000 or more) grew from 3 percent to 8 percent.”
Within the same time period, meanwhile, women had relatively improved their economic standing.
“On the whole, more young people are working today and have a full-time job that employs them year-round. The driving force behind the increase, however, has been the rise of young women in the labor force,” it noted. “Whereas the share of men aged 25 to 34 who were employed is about the same today as it was in 1975, the share of young women who were employed has risen from just under one-half to over two-thirds.”
“The median income of women aged 25 to 34 who were working rose from $23,000 to $29,000 between 1975 and today,” the study went on to say. “At the same time, the share of young women who earned $60,000 or more grew from about 2 percent to 13 percent—a minority, but still a sizeable change. Even with this change, however, the median income of young women is still $11,000 lower than the income of young men.” (The number of young women making more than $100,000 has increased from 0.2 percent in 1975 to 3.2 percent in 2016.)
As the WEEKLY STANDARD reported back in August, a poll by the Los Angeles Times and the American Enterprise Institute found that 57 percent of Americans—and 71 percent of poorer residents—thought that it was “very hard for poor people to find work” and that poverty is “more or less” a permanent condition.
Other findings from the Census Bureau report include the following:
- 96.5 percent of millennials believed that becoming financially independent from one’s parents—preferably by the age of 21—was a “somewhat” or “extremely important” life transition. However, in 2016, only 28.9 percent of young people had managed to achieve that milestone.
- Further evidence that people are delaying marriage: In 1975, 57 percent of young people lived with their spouses. But in 2016, 31 percent lived with their parents, 27 percent lived with their spouses, 12 percent lived with an unmarried partner (as opposed to less than 1 percent in the ’70s), and 21 percent lived with roommates or other relatives.
- Among young adults who live with their parents, around 1 in 4 between ages 25-34 are neither enrolled in school nor working. The study notes that there are various factors contributing to idleness, including medical disabilities, the raising of children, and the unaffordable nature of independent living in some metropolitan areas.
Given the data about economic struggles, delayed marriages and more people living with their parents, it’s no wonder that the report concludes: “If one theme describes how adulthood has changed over the last 40 years, it is growing complexity.”
