Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Just sayin.
Because of this outlook I decided that I'd be better off working as a consultant and travelling. Really, I see little benefit to working in a corporation when we have today's lack of job security.
And with the exorbitant cost of real estate, which is several times what my parents had to deal with during their time, I see no reason to stay in one place when it'd be actually easier to move around.
The cost-benefit relation to having a commitment to a company and place is not the same as it was before. At least that's the way I see it.
Yes the unfunded social security and medicare is a disaster, but it's not going away, so all people in their 20's now will have to start working out ways around this particular problem.
My take on it is that spending time on negative emotions like this gives yourself an excuse to fail.
Is opting out becoming easier, or is the beaten path simply becoming so hard that opting out is easier by comparison?
Full disclosure: Perpetual traveller, about as far as it is possible to opt out of the expectations discussed in the article.
Speaking as a 28 year who has not yet "grown up" (as defined by the nytimes), I think those of us who find ourselves in this situation shouldn't seek to blame anyone else, least of all the baby boomers. We should remember the good things that the baby boom generation in America has done, like:
- protesting the Vietnam war, which was started and heavily supported by the "greatest generation"
- pushing for Civil Rights legislation in the U.S. for women and minorities
- creating greater awareness of environmental problems, and spreading the belief that we must be proper stewards of our planet, not only for own survival but also for future generations
- developing the computer hardware, software and telecommunications industries, which has made an incredibly positive change in the lives of billions (including all of us here who have these advancements to thank for our livelihood)
I think the real issue here is that the baby boomers and later generations enjoy infantilizing their children. First they needed to protect their 10 year olds from nonexistent child predators, wifi and inorganic food. Then they needed to protect their 16 year olds from depraved newfangled sex ("rainbow parties", etc), completely unlike the sex they had during the 60's/70's. Now that their kids are grown up, they need a new reason to remain involved and treat them as infants.
Especially when combined with the key fact that in the USA all incomes except those of the rich have been declining in real terms for over a generation. And independence costs money. Kids stay involved with their parents longer because the marginal cost of the fourth bedroom in a four-bedroom house is a lot smaller than the cost of a one-bedroom apartment.
The other thing I'd point out is that the "traditional American way" to run a nuclear family -- the one where kids hit age 18 and then move out on their own, sometimes to other states -- is (was?) actually a very specific pattern of life from a very specific time in a very specific culture. In many cultures, historically and around the world, households traditionally contained grandparents, parents, and children all living together. It would be considered alien for a child to desert the home of their parents unless they were explicitly married out to another family, in which case the child would be expected to live in the home of the spouse's parents. To strike out on your own would be crazy! What would your family say?
(And one wonders if the nomads of the Tibetan plateau are sitting around reading Tibetan op-eds bemoaning the decline of the traditional Tibetan family: Some women are taking only one husband! What are his brothers supposed to do for a wife? [1])
Traditions can be pretty ephemeral. One of my favorite things to do is to find "ancient traditions" whose inventors are still living.
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[1] Note: I took Anthropology 101 from a world expert on polyandry -- one of the world's most unusual family patterns -- but I should note that I made up this particular example. I actually have no idea to what extent polyandry is in decline, or whether a family of Tibetan nomadic brothers and their wife are likely to read op-eds.
Although I hear this claim made often, I believe it to be untrue. People at all income quintiles have more and better stuff now than people at the same quintile at all periods in the past [1]. That would be impossible if real incomes really went down.
[1] I'm assuming comparisons over at least 10 years, to avoid "during recession" vs "peak of bubble" comparisons.
Principally, the increase in costs to raise a family comes from large rises in the cost of housing and healthcare.
Quote: "The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s. But core expenses kept going up. By the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much (adjusted for inflation) on mortgages than they did a generation ago -- for a house that was, on average, only ten percent bigger and 25 years older. They also had to pay twice as much to hang on to their health insurance."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/america-witho...
If not, then my point stands.
(Regarding Warren, see my other posts in this thread. Her data shows that a two-income couple of 2000 has more income and also consumes considerably more stuff than a single-earner in 1970. E.g., the 2000-era couple spends 55% more on 2 cars than the 1970-era couple spent on 1 car.)
Can we measure wealth by the "amount/quality" of good/services that you have?
Do we instantly become all richer if somebody discovers a cheaper way to build a car/TV/whatever ? (suddenly more people can afford it), or does the concept of wealth make sense mostly in relation to condition of other people ?
But anyway, perhaps we also have to take in consideration one of our often undervalued stuff: time, our time
I'm not sure, didn't check the data out there, but I have the feeling that modern life for the average people means less time for themselves.
Of course, your increased possibilities (increased wealth or reduced costs) allow you to travel around the world, take tons of pictures, having fun etc in ways that were unthinkable for the previous generations (of comparable incomes).
But we didn't get it for free, we sold our time, little pieces of our own time, one second here, one minute there.
I don't mean only the time we dedicate doing things like working, commuting etc, but also the time we sold by listening to music we didn't choose to listen, by watching advertisements of things that perhaps we don't need, by enjoying shopping, searching for stuff, addicted to all that consumer-mania stimuli which transforms our time, our attention into our perceived wealth.
Yes, because without a huge marked of people wanting to get a car/TV/whatever, those goods couldn't be affordable. Everybody in a consumer society is participating in this wealth transformation, one's own second at a time.
> People at all income quintiles have more and better stuff
> now than people at the same quintile at all periods in the
> past
Er, that's the same hypothesis, unless I misread g'parent: better and more stuff is cheaper, so even though incomes (measured by commodities or something) didn't go up much, we're all much better off.
So the claim that "real wages have gone down" contradicts your description. What you describe is an increase in real wages.
This presents a paradox - people often claim that real wages have remained flat/gone down. And yet, people have more stuff now than ever before, which should be impossible if real wages went down.
Meanwhile, there's been massive inflation in services, particularly health care and education. When my mom went to college, a $3000 National Merit Scholarship basically covered a whole year's tuition. When I went to college, tuition + room & board was roughly $40K/year, and is higher now.
People are responding to those price incentives, which is why you see people at the poverty level with blu-ray DVD players, iPhones, and netbooks, but with no health insurance or college education. Prices for consumer electronics have come down so much that it's worth more to them to spend half a month's salary on a phone that they'll keep for a couple years rather than try to get health insurance that they can't afford anyway.
Whether this is a good thing depends on whether you consider phones, computers, and entertainment to be more important than health care and education.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_pc...
In any case, I don't much care about education by itself, since most people value education only insofar as it allows them to get wealth. If people have more wealth, why would I worry about their education? (That's not to say that education is becoming more scarce - far from it. We are more education today than ever before.)
The same applies to health insurance - I don't care about the cost of health insurance, I care about health. By most measures that I'm aware of, health is increasing. For example, life expectancy went up 8 years since 1970 and infant mortality went down more than 50%:
The figures I have from http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php go from 1975 to the present. $3000 in 1975 was 25.4% of a year's income for the median family. $4000 in 2009 was 82.5% of a year's income for the median family. My understanding is that tax rates on the median family have increased, making that picture even worse.
Therefore education is much less affordable than it used to be for the median family.
In any case, this only makes the paradox I highlighted more puzzling. College is more expensive, and yet college attendance per capita is up 40% over 1970 [2]. If real income is flat, then people must be giving up other goods and services to attend college. And yet, people seem to be consuming more goods and services of all sorts in addition to college.
This doesn't make sense. I suspect that real income is being incorrectly calculated.
[1] See the table here, and do an inflaction calculations backwards to see that the average income was $6500 in 1970. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
[2] Combine data from here http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98 with the fact that the population went up about 50% between 1970 and today.
[3] I'm citing Warren's data and ignoring her opinions. Some people seem to get confused when I do this, so I'll be really explicit about it.
The first is that the savings rate has dropped significantly. People who do not save can purchase more goods with the same income. (At least in the short term.)
The second is that due to widening income disparities, the ratio in earnings between the median family and the top fifth has increased. Therefore college has not become as proportionately hard to afford for the top fifth as it has for the median.
The third is that the increasing income disparity has come with widespread recognition that a college education is a good way to improve your odds of being in the top fifth rather than the bottom half. This makes education proportionately more valuable. People are willing to spend more on things they value more.
Fourth, the structure of financial aid has changed. It is less often true that students pay the full sticker price for college today than historically. And the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get a break. (Harvard's policy being an extreme example.)
And last but not least, in a very different tangent, income disparity leads to an increased fraction of consumption being accounted for by a small fraction of the population. So changes in total consumption do not necessarily indicate changes in consumption for the median.
It's also not limited to any strata of income - the poor today have more goods and services available than the middle class of 1970. This casts doubt on explanations based on inequality.
Decreased savings might explain things, though I think in the long term it would cause inflation. Would need to think about it.
The claim you're disputing was made about real income in absolute terms. So I agree with you.
But I have added some idle speculation about average net-worth position for the lower 4 quintiles and a hypothesis about why this may have happened.
I'll just add that there's a feedback loop. The more parents infantile their children, the longer the children tend to take to grow up, and the more the parents will feel like the children are infants.
I haven't done independent fact-checking of this statement, but assuming it is true, and taking it in light of the numbers given in the article, it seems like the 1970s were the historical aberration where people married younger, instead of the present being the aberration for people marrying older. I think the biggest fault of the article is that it takes as its thesis, "Things aren't like when I grew up, and the way things were when I grew up is the natural order of things!"
Well, as long as we're shooting from the hip, I think there's a different reason behind delayed marriage and childbearing. Being constantly flooded with information allows people to form a better picture of where they fit in the world, and be generally more self aware of what they want out of life. That means that people can't live life on instinctual autopilot like they used to. Why spend some of the best years for taking a risk (not just startups, but things like taking a year off to backpack, etc.) doing the most staid and conservative thing a person can do--settle down and start a family?
I could easily be wrong, but I seriously doubt that being coddled as kids has any bearing on the current state of adulthood. That's the kind of thing people have been saying forever.
I'd cite the famous study that showed more choice equals less action with the jams in the supermarket if I could be bothered to look it up.
I know it was much easier for me to make life choices once I had ruled out a massive amount of things.
I also don't see backpacking as drawing out childhood - if anything, the opposite. Well travelled people used to adverse circumstance and problem solving make better adults. It's the ones who never leave home, never make any choices, never do anything that are the eternal kids.
Marriage/childbearing has been delayed because we can't afford it. My father at 30 could afford a bungalow to raise his kids, and my mother could afford to be a housewife.
Try doing that today.
Where I grew up housing has inflated to the point where I'd have to be making the equivalent of 3-4x my father's old salary to even afford the mortgage. Keeping quality of life level, it's hard to imagine being able to own a home in a decent neighborhood, even if your partner works also (which, btw, makes childbearing even less attractive).
IMHO it has less to do with sexual empowerment and more to do with the fact that the middle class is shrinking alarmingly quickly, and fairly soon will be all but a memory. The whole concept of the breadwinner feeding a caretaker and children in a home that he/she owns is practically impossible for most of America today.
Heck, my friend bought a house in Seattle within six months of graduating. He's leveraged as hell, but has a job at Amazon and is renting rooms to friends.
I'm 45, and if this trend of increasingly defining older and older people more and more infantile continues, I could end up a baby again before I retire.
Seriously though, I don't see the newness here. My father told me that his grandfather told him that you don't truly become and adult until around age 35 or so. That bit of family wisdom dates back to early the last century. A hundred years ago.
If we're into social commentary, I'd point out that as we become more and more pampered, we become more and more infantile. I expect to push the button on the iPhone and have the pizza show up 15 minutes later. I expect to be in contact with all of my friends instantly via text message. I expect to have college paid for and a warm house with the folks if things don't work out.
These are probably great things to expect, but when you're not making work-or-starve decisions every day, you can easily start expecting a helluva lot of stuff that just realistically isn't going to happen. We call people who have unrealistic views about their status in the world, an inability to make decisions, and the need to be taken care of, well, chidlike. I love optimism, but that's not what I see from this article. This is different than optimism. Optimism says we'll make the most of it and things will be fine. This is I-want-to-be-a-rock-star. I have everything else I want. I want this too. It's all luck, anyway. Show me the button I push for the limo.
Put another way, these super-cool new things need to be compared to something. If you compare them to nothing, you know what you have and what you don't have. If you have no frame of reference, it's all just "normal". That lack of context makes a difference in being able to do stuff.
I don't mean that as commentary on "those dang kids". I think every generation has an awesome potential, mainly because of all these cool new things. I see no reason why we need a new developmental stage. 20-somethings can fly nuclear bombers, I think they'll do alright with career choices. If we let them. Pointing out they are mentally impaired is no more useful than pointing out the average 85-year-old is mentally impaired. Yet many of them drive, work, and do just fine in the world.
What I think is missing at this age, frankly, is some sense of comparison. You need to know you are unique and special, just like everybody else. I think some form of mandatory national service could help.
Either that or I need to start looking for rattles that I find appealing.
I also found it interesting that the author examines the question of extending adolescence throughout a person's 20s, but never questions whether everything about our current concept of adolescence is a good idea. pg did a good job of skewering our current educational environment for teenagers and its psychological downsides.
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Maybe we should be discussing rolling back some of the things introduced to support our current concept of adolescence, instead of extending it even further.
I'm 22 years old, I graduated with an engineering degree this may and started working 5 weeks ago at a full-time job. The job required me to move out on my own. My girlfriend (of 5 years) and I decided to do it together so she moved as well and she's looking for a job. We pay all of our own bills.
I have an older brother (26) who also has a technical degree and is full time employed, but both he and his girlfriend still live at home and are "planning" on moving out soon.
Financially they are in a much better position. They make roughly comparable salaries as we do, but their expenses are basically only for health care, their cars, their cell phones, and any discretionary spending. The parents pay for a roof, food, utilities etc. They can save up their cash and are trying to move directly from living at home to buying their own place so they skip the renting waste of money (please don't get into that firestorm here, I've heard all the arguments, suffice to say they're saving money by not renting right now).
In contrast, I'm paying absolutely everything. We have roughly $1800 a month in rent and bills that they don't have. It sure isn't as expensive as living in NYC but thats 22 grand a year that we're not putting in the bank that we would have if we could have found a job near home and lived with our parents.
So financially, moving home after college makes a lot of sense. Especially if you have loans. If I were living at home I'd be putting that 22 grand a year into starting my own company instead of paying a landlord and some utility companies.
On the other hand, we're getting an experience they're not. I go home and my brother is considering buying some fancy ass car, meanwhile my girlfriend and I are juggling bills and debt to make ends meet (that first month when you have to pay all your bills but haven't actually gotten a full months of pay SUCKS). It is nerve racking and I feel like we're "maturing" because of it.
In the end will it pay off for us? I doubt it will financially but it might in other ways. But if you look at our friends, maybe 5 or 6 out of 20 that just graduated moved out and the rest went home. It is by far the norm to move home after college now.
(Also your quote about the 20 year olds driving nuclear bombers struck me. I showed up for work (engineer at a military contracter) and suddenly I'm surrounded by a bunch of teenagers in uniform running all of the multi-million dollar weapon systems we make and I got a "they're just kids!" emotion that makes me feel really damn old. )
I don't feel bad about it, it's just the only solution at the moment. Loans are getting paid and our car will be paid soon so it's only a matter of time before were on our own again.
It's interesting that you feel the need to defend this, whereas in places outside the mainstream US culture, like Hawaii, it's the norm. Children are more likely to live at home through and after college until they've saved enough for a down payment on a home or apartment, and then move out.
Financially it's smart, it keeps families together longer, parents get to bond with their children as young adults, share life lessons the kids may not have appreciated at an earlier age, and other good things. But for some reason it's all taboo in mainstream American culture.
Where I live, I probably wouldn't buy. The town is dependent on exactly three businesses for jobs. There are 30,000 jobs from those 3 businesses, but that is it. One company moving out (already threatened this year) or one canceled government contract (already threatened this year) and boom the housuing market is dead. I wouldn't tie myself in a house here for any reason, so I get there are reasons why renting is preferable.
But renting also feels like such an incredible waste of money.
Unfortunately, a lot of people who are anti-buying jump all over threads that even mention the conventional wisdom that buying is preferable to renting. Like everything in the real world, the answer is always "it depends".
That said, I feel like there is a negative stigma attached to living at home after college for everyone except those in the 22-27 crowd. I know when I was 17 I thought, I wouldn't be caught dead living at home after college. Now that I'm staring the bills down, I totally get it. I'm sure a lot of older adults are saying "how can these kids still live at home, they're 24!", but the economics of it make a lot of sense, and if your parents aren't a hassle why not?
Just be honest with your accounting, when you buy a house. Apart from doing small repairs and all the paperwork yourself, there shouldn't be much of a difference between living in your own house vs renting and using the capital that would be tied down in a house to buy some shares or bonds instead.
Parents don't have to push the kids out of the house they day after high-school graduation, like a fledgling from the nest, but fully covering rent, food, utilities (did they also pay for his degree?) is in the long run not doing your brother any favors -- it is just delaying the lessons he'll have to learn the hard way later about personal finances, choices, and responsibility.
We recently moved out and I feel so much better. There was so much pressure that wasn't even being processed by my consciousness. I didn't make phone calls because I didn't want to be tying up the phone line (my in-laws also have a lot of far-flung relatives that stay in frequent contact) for an hour or more talking to my parents. We didn't want to have friends over too often because it wasn't our house.
Me and my wife are covering food/rent/utils/services by ourselves, putting a decent amount into savings and have the freedom to do what we want. We're 22/21 and we're responsibly using credit cards, financing and still saving money; yet my brother who easily earns twice as much as me and is older still manages to go overdrawn because he was never motivated to move out.
Financially moving home makes a lot of sense, if the parents are willing to shoulder the financial burden. Those parents are paying for the food and electricity the children are using. They are paying an opportunity cost on that room the children are using (they could have used it for their own purposes or even rented it out).
Granted, there is a certain economy of scale in living together, but you can get a similar effect by taking in roommates (I did that for part of college). If the parents were to insist on the children paying close to fair market value for that food, electricity, and rent then the kids would get some benefit, but it would be nowhere close the huge difference you are talking about.
[edited for spelling and grammar]
Sounds like your brother is taking the easy route but planning for the future. Sounds like you are taking the hard route and learning a heck of a lot more.
Your brother will learn what you are now when he finally gets on his own (albeit up to 6-7 years in his own time after you did), and later you'll be more mature to plan better.
It doesn't need to be either-or. I juggled bills on my own without help from mommy and daddy and within 2 years me and my fiance have bought our own place. All while paying for rent, utilities, food, gas, student loans, car payments, back surgeries, multiple moves, etc.
It all comes down to focus, discipline, drive, and a large dose of humility along the way. Something not many 20-somethings admittedly display consistently.
I used to think people who don't move out are lame or scared, but then I came to Asia. It's normal here - you don't move out until you get married, but you save the money for a house, kids, whatever. Someone who lives at home and then blows their cash on junk is in the worst of both worlds.
What does a person get out of national service? I think it'd be better instead to make high schools more difficult and let people start working and having a meaningful impact on the world earlier rather than later.
Other than that I agree with your post in general, I think the lack of a frame of reference/goal posts really sets people back. If everyone assumes that you wait till your 25 to start a business then they may wait till then; if they knew in the past that there were generals as young as 12 years old then twelve year olds may realize they can impact the world in a real way even at their young age.
I will not downvote you but I have a problem with the attitude that (seems to) stand behind this phrase. Remember the context. If you are an American, you grew up in one of the richest countries in the world, you probably had chances for education, access to technology, functioning roads and other public utilities, etc. etc. Of course, your life is your life but it's not like everything society might ask of you is "theft".
> "What does a person get out of national service?"
It's not everything about you, and perhaps you should ask yourself where would you be without the context of the rich country you grew up in (yes, I'm just guessing here, correct me if I'm wrong)? Is every tax "evil" too? Nobody likes paying taxes, me neither, but there is a difference between discussing where the balance of give and take is and just interpreting everything always in terms of "it's all mine". If you had to assign percentages of your success (if any), starting from zero, how much would you assign to your environment, your parents, your effort, your luck?
What does national service to for the nation? It robs people of productive time that could be spent pursuing an education or career. Things that improve the world around them.
Furthermore you second thought is fundamentally flawed, you do not lay a claim on anyone by merely being nice to them. How would you like it if I swept you sidewalk, raked your leaves, etc because I enjoyed the way it made the neighborhood looked and then came to you 10 years later and demanded payment for all the help I gave to you. Your parents, your environment, etc are all the responsibility of individuals carrying out their own will - they do it because it's what they want to do; they may not enjoy it, but they still want it done.
No one owes anyone anything when they did not enter into a formal agreement, the likes of which cannot be entered into by a child. This does not mean that you shouldn't help your neighbor, volunteer your time, donate money, etc - because you want to. But to lay claim, to demand that someone pay debts they did not incur on the threat of violence is a dangerous and unjust claim.
PS if any of this sounds inflammatory, please disregard -- all is intended as a polite philosophical discussion.
I tend to agree with the general sentiment, but I think this analogy is very misleading. For one, bomber pilots are a very selective group that have been screened. Nobody screens you for life in adulthood. So, most 20 somethings probably don't have the chops to fly nuclear bombers in combat situations. Also, the set of skills needed to perform the function of piloting bombers (where one is also given extensive training in those skills) is not necessarily the same set of skills needed for making career choices and navigating through life where the acquisition of those skills is a lot less clear. So yes, while some 20 somethings can fly nuclear bombers that doesn't tell us anything useful about how well 20 somethings in general are able to make career choices.
The issue of failed to launch kids at home is simply a rational utilization of economics during a recession on their part. Nearly 30% of young 20 aomethinga are Underemployed, discouraging the investment in housing or leasing in one location they might move d From in search of better work for an entire year.
Also in British Columbia, you can't rent an apartment without someone signing for it until you are 19. So its hard for someone to grow up until they are in their late 20s because they are used to society protecting them until such a late age and then when it is time for them to move out etc. they don't know what to do with themselves because they haven't been able to learn what to do when they are on their own.
So if our society wasn't so over-protective, people would be growing up faster, but instead we are treating them like children until they are almost 20.
In New Hampshire everyone that can get their drivers license does so on the day of their 16th birthday. It's like a rite of passage.
There are no learning licenses or permits or anything, but you are allowed to drive with a parent at 15 and a half.
Young people can do a lot of things if you let them.
As far as marriage goes, I think the advance in marriage age is a good thing. I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? Its not that the kids are changing, but rather that society has enough resources to better accommodate the needs of its youth. I don't think that's something to be afraid of.
And where children are concerned, I fail to see why that's a milestone at all. By that standard, Bristol Palin is more of an "adult" than most responsible and hard-working twenty-somethings.
What is it about the place your parents live that makes it "home"? (Especially when that place isn't even the house you grew up in!)
As I see it, "home" is wherever I live. So "moving back home" is a tautology, and "leaving home" on a permanent basis is an oxymoron.
I mostly agree with your sentiment, that perhaps society now is better equipped to handle the youth. but if 17-25 is too young to be having kids, don't you think it a bit odd that those are the most fertile years? I think most folks associate "adult" with "responsibility". and having a kid induces a lot of responsibility.
Why are so many people in their 70's not dead?
Best age for childbearing remains 20-35 - Delaying risks heartbreak, say experts http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/30737.php
Regular feature: things you won't read in other papers.
Upon safely reaching mid-life, the life expectancy has been around 80 for decades.
Wasn't Mr. Zed Shaw going to kill them all?
If the jobs were there that were there in the 90's or 80's, which required less investment, had more reasonable starting salaries compared to housing/medical/car costs, many people being drifters and living with mom and dad wouldn't.
I do think the tech industry is still doing better than most though, and requires relatively smaller amounts of training, so I'm not sure HNers empathize with what it's like for non-tech people.
See Elizabeth Warren's book "The Two Income Trap", which shows that basically everything besides taxes and expectations went down in cost (you need to read carefully, she plays down the tax numbers by presenting them in a confusing manner).
[edit: to clarify, housing/medical/car are more expensive. But incomes went up as well. As a percentage of income, those expenses went down.]
... I'm fairly certain she showed that medical expenses + housing + need for a second vehicle accounted for the majority of the change in expenditures for the average nuclear family.
I haven't read the book yet, but I've watched her talk. This is where she talks about changes in expenses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=15m0s
Edit: Skip to here if you can't spare four minutes extra for some exposition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=19m30s
According to her data, income rose 75%. Mortgage increased by 70%, but note that houses are bigger and have more amenities. Two cars in the early 2000's costs 55% more than 1 car in 1973. Health insurance increased 60% and pays for far more procedures and treatments than in 1973. Taxes increased 140%.
You are confused because she presents the numbers in a strange way.
She presents the increase in mortgage/car/health insurance as a percentage increase: [mortgage 2000 / mortgage 1973 - 1] x 100% = 70% increase.
She then presents the increase in taxes as a percentage of income: 33% of income in 2000 - 24% of income in 1973 = 9% of income.
Her raw data is great, but her presentation is really confusing. I'm rather leery of her conclusions - she is great at gathering data, but terrible at analysis.
[edit: really curious why a simple presentation of the data is getting downmodded.]
She presents the increase in mortgage/car/health insurance as a percentage increase
According to her data, income rose 75%. Mortgage increased by 70%
Yes, they are more expensive for the same family in real terms. Essentially, the second income has gone to housing.
According to her data, income rose 75%
But with an additional person in the workforce.
Mortgage increased by 70%, but note that houses are bigger and have more amenities.
House size increased, but only marginally, an extra bathroom or bedroom.
Health insurance increased 60%, and pays for far more things than in 1973.
While I haven't read the book, she said the exact opposite in her talk. That hospitals are sending people home "quicker and sicker" and hospital stays or having a sick worker are much more dangerous and expensive for the modern family due to lack of coverage and the need for the second income. When a child or grandparent gets sick, someone needs to take care of them. In the past this was the stay at home parent, but now a worker must be out of work, but as we've already seen, they need the income in order to make the house payment.
She then presents the increase in taxes as a percentage of income: 33% of income in 2000 - 24% of income in 1973 = 9% of income.
Taxes increase because the second worker's income is taxed after the first worker's, at a higher rate.
And her main point, from what I understood it, is that the need for a second worker in the workforce to keep the same standard of living made the family much less stable and susceptable to tragedy, something presenting the costs as a percentage of family income fails to demonstrate.
Health insurance in 1970 didn't pay for a huge amount of things that it now pays for. For example, MRIs, viagra, birth control, etc. Far more diseases are treatable. I'd love to see her evidence otherwise.
The problem her book raises is that many families take on a riskier financial profile in order to consume more (though given her poor data analysis/presentation skills, I'm obviously skeptical of her conclusions). Her opinion is that costs have risen.
Her data shows that costs (besides taxes) have increased less than income.
I was quoting her presentation. This 60% increase in housing size is not what the video that I linked to says. All of my points come from this and other interviews I've seen her in. If they are nonrepresentational of her views and data, then that is why, however I sincerely doubt that she would be presenting the opposite views in a presentation of about a book that she presents in the book itself.
Health insurance in 1970 didn't pay for a huge amount of things that it now pays for. For example, MRIs, viagra, birth control, etc. Far more diseases are treatable. I'd love to see her evidence otherwise.
The specific example she gives is hospital stays for childbirth. I'm out of my element here, so I will say no more about health care.
The problem her book raises is that many families take on a riskier financial profile in order to consume more
This is the opposite of what she's tried to convey in every video I've seen of her. That people are making smart decisions such as buying houses closer to good schools, which drives up prices for parents with children. That the need for a second worker leads to a riskier financial profile. She says the idea that people are fiscally irresponsible and consuming more simply isn't true.
Her data shows that costs (besides taxes) have increased less than income.
I don't know why you keep harping on income, as it just isn't the point. The additional worker is. A family needs a second worker, earning a second income, taxed at a higher rate, leaving no one to take care of children or the sick, to have the same lifestyle their parents had with only one parent in the workforce. This need for two workers makes them twice as susceptible to lost income and serious illness.
Whether she is right or wrong, I feel you are misrepresenting her argument.
The 60% number I got from a quick google search, not from her book. I didn't watch her online videos, so I don't know what she claims there. I believe the claim she gives in her book is that houses today have 1 extra bedroom/bathroom, but I don't recall her quoting square footage (the book is at home, so I can't check).
Also, as she clearly shows in her book, a family needs a second worker to have a higher standard of living (bigger house, two cars, better medicine) than their parents.
Regarding her numbers on childbirth, I truly don't understand why she would look at duration of hospital stays. Maybe if hospitals were cutting corners and performing worse it would be a bad thing. But if fewer complications requiring a long hospital stay occur, that would be a good thing. The data on maternal death rates suggests the latter is more likely: in 1970, 25.7/100,000 women died in childbirth (14.3 in 1978), compared to 13.3/100,000 in 2006 [1].
That sort of thing is why I generally ignore her opinions/viewpoints. I'm sure the data point she cites is correct, but she seems to interpret it in a really strange way.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7078850 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death
This is where she addresses health insurance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=31m10s
And here the additional risk with needing to take off work for medical care: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=33m40s
Also, as she clearly shows in her book, a family needs a second worker to have a higher standard of living (bigger house, two cars, better medicine) than their parents.
This is not her view, nor what she argues with her data. You are certainly free and encouraged to interpret the data yourself, but it was unclear that you were giving your own view and not her's, which is what I found so confusing. This is why my approach to this conversation was one of correction, not discussion.
I tend to agree with her analysis of the data and feel that yours is misleading. I suspect that this arises from a difference in priorities or viewpoint that would be impossible to address in this space. You have, however, inspired me to read her book, so for that I thank you.
From my first post: "According to her data," [...] "(you need to read carefully, she plays down the tax numbers by presenting them in a confusing manner)."
From my second post: "Her raw data is great, but her presentation is really confusing. I'm rather leery of her conclusions - she is great at gathering data, but terrible at analysis."
Not sure how I could have been clearer that I was relying on her data rather than her opinion. If I cite her again, I'll be sure to use all caps.
I'm also not sure why you feel my comparisons of square footage, # of cars or maternal death rates are misleading.
Choice quotes:
"So we looked at the data for two-income families today earning an average income. What we found was that, while those families certainly make more money than a one-income family did a generation ago, by the time they pay for the basics -- an average home, a health insurance policy, a second car to get Mom to work, child care, and taxes -- that family actually has less money left over at the end of the month to show for it."
"...[A] big part of the two-income trap is that families have basically bid up the cost of living. Housing is a big example. A generation ago, an average family could buy an average home on one income. Today you can't do that in three-quarters of American cities. We all know that housing prices are going up, but what most people don't realize is that this has become a family problem. Housing prices are rising twice as fast for families with kids. ... Average mortgage expenses have gone 70 times faster than the average father's income, and the only way families are keeping up is by bringing in two incomes."
"The point is that families today are spending their money no more foolishly than their parents did. And yet they're five times more likely to go bankrupt, and three times more likely to lose their homes. Families are going broke on the basics --housing, health insurance, and education. These are the kind of bills that you can't just trim around the edges in the event of a downturn."
I presented the raw data in a homogeneous manner in my response to masterj, which will hopefully reduce the confusion.
The 2 income trap is real, and the US seems to have fallen for the ridiculous trap that is expensive housing. The sad thing is that it will take a societal shift away from obsessing with McMansions in order to affect any meaningful change, and it's unlikely to happen in our lifetimes because the realtors are the #3 top donor to government (See opensecrets.org - the NAR is #3)
Or maybe you are just the one that doesn't actually understand it.
It is like inflation not counting energy prices - it doesn't matter what happens to prices on some things, it matters what happens to the prices of things you actually spend your money on.
So if housing prices went down per square foot compared to income but the size of the houses increased by a larger percentage than the decrease in price per square foot, the net result is more money out of your wallet.
A good example of this: I tried to get a small place, I don't need the space, but when I looked I couldn't get any smaller than where I'm living. I'd love to lop off 400 sq ft and get that percentage of my money back, but I just can't. That is what exists in the market today where I'm living. The end result is more money out of my paycheck than I'd like and an empty bedroom in my house. (Luckily we can afford the place off one income at least)
There are a lot of reasons why this happens, but the biggest one is that the cost difference to the builder of making a small house compare to a big one is a lot less than the price difference they get for building them. The same goes for boats, and today you can hardly buy a small boat anymore, they've all figured out the fatter margins are on the bigger ones.
A similar question applies to her numbers for income. Income averages have increased, but that is a result of increasing income disparity more than an average increase. So what is the change for someone in the 1st percentile? The 25th? The 75th? the 100th? It is an impossibility for those numbers to be the same because the income disparity has increased so somebody is white washing the data here.
Well, I seem to be the only person here posting numbers. Are they wrong? If so, please show me where.
Incidentally, not everyone is confused. There was a WSJ article pointing out her confusing and misleading presentation, for example: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118705537958296783.html
She shows how everything in our society is less expensive now, except the places where we are spending all our money: Housing, Healthcare, and Education. And how ridiculous it is for families to have 2 incomes just to afford a house in a neighborhood that has "good schools". This is the 2 income trap. 2 income families are twice as likely to suffer the loss of one of those incomes, and if their mortgage requires 2 incomes to pay, there goes their house.
For some reason the US has fully bought this ridiculous obsession with housing. A $3,000 or $4,000 a month mortgage that takes 50-75% of their monthly income is considered "normal" somehow, and keeping up with the neighbors in conspicuous consumption is considered normal as well. No wonder it is unsustainable and our economy is suffering.
See my other post which gives numbers on healthcare. I agree that college costs are out of control.
People choose to take on a riskier financial profile in order to consume more. That doesn't mean things are more expensive.
[1] http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/us-home-size.html#axzz0wycZ...
The cost increase in housing was non-uniform, and the largest increases in cost were driven by houses in good school districts and we're talking tens of thousands of dollars across school catchment areas in the same metro.
Thus the increases in house prices were disproportionately leveled on families with school-age children.
Prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), the interest on all personal loans (including credit card debt) was deductible. TRA86 eliminated that broad deduction, but created the narrower home mortgage interest deduction under the theory that it would encourage home ownership.[1]
Basicly housing has been subsidized relative to other purchaces. EX: A 55" TV included with a new home costs a lot less than one paid for with credit cards.
Basically, the stuff costs more, but the lower end of the tax brackets aren't adjusted for inflation based off household income, as the tax burden has shifted to the middle class from the upper class.
I am 2 years behind career-wise due to the recession. While other people who graduated a year or two before me are qualified for senior-level positions, I am stuck with dead-end opportunities that don't expand my skill set.
Luckily I don't plan to be an employee for life, but if I did want to be a company woman I'd be screwed.
* A house and senate that behave like toddlers (complete with screaming matches, name calling, and taking their ball home)
* An aging population more concerned with their pensions than the debt they are assigning to their children.
* Complete and utter disregard for the environmental devastation they are leaving behind.
I've learned more from the previous previous generation than I ever did from this last one (this doesn't include mom, my mom is the best). Mottos like, "Do your job, do it well, get a better one". Look out for your parents (ie. don't stick them in a home and wait for them to die).
This is not US specific. When I was in high-school I dismissed politics as politicians behaved like little children from my point of view. In some countries there are even childish physical fights between politicians in house (probably not senate).
They've cherry-picked the trough of median age at first marriage in the modern era. Looking back a little farther shows that for men first marriage only dipped into the early 20s during a few decades in the middle of the 20th century. For women first marriage has been steadily rising, however.
M FSource: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html#axzz0wz2a14ih shows 1890s to 2000s by decade, ultimately citing U.S. Census data.
"If society decides to protect these young people or treat them differently from fully grown adults, how can we do this without becoming all the things that grown children resist — controlling, moralizing, paternalistic?"
I don't see how "we", as society, need to do anything. If a parent wants to allow a child to live with them until he's 30, if people want to get married or have kids later, or if a parent wants to kick their kid out of the nest at 18 or two 19 year olds want to marry while still undergrads, I don't see how "we" as the broader society need to do anything. Leave it to the individual.
I find the idea that society is obligated to change to accommodate the indefinite extension of adolescence to be controlling, moralizing, and paternalistic.
(And this is coming from someone who got married at 29, just under the 30 deadline. I just don't see the need to reinforce the decision I personally made as a social norm.)
Now, we're segregated by age classification. You grow up only amongst kids your age. Adults work only with adults, and the grandparents are away in a home. Events where generations or age groups mix seem rare. I'm not enough of a sociologist to know whether there's anything inherently wrong with this, but it gives me pause.
In a bad mood, I think I'm retarded. In a good mood, I think it's neoteny. Certainly I'm better off than my parents, who unconsciously followed societal expectations, had kids in their early twenties and in so doing doomed themselves to decades of misery because they're profoundly incompatible. It's not clear to me that I've lost anything of value by the path that I've taken.
At 15 I set my heart on learning;
at 30 I firmly took my stand;
at 40 I had no delusions;
at 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven;
at 60 my ear was attuned;
at 70 I followed my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of right.In contrast, the "greatest generation" hit their kids, hated their hair and music, and didn't know how to party. They were easier to love from a distance. The current crop of parents were also plagued with prosperity and overbought housing, thanks to our distorted tax system. Therefore they have cheap space available.
Edit: and the follow-up on the artist's blog, er, "blag": http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/ and http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/
But one of the commenters here hit the nail on the head: real wages are going down, cost of living going up, plus throw in a little stigma about "renting being for poor people" and you'll find young adults waiting to save up to buy a house and as a result getting out on their own later.
Left home at 17, crashed at a mates place until I could find a job, any job. Most everyone in my circle of friends left home by 19 or 20.
I think there is a fair bit of pressure to be "independent" and "stand on your own feet", at least in the culture I grew up in; especially if you're male. You're expected to have "guts", and not going out and making it on your own, is seen as not having any.
Because of that obstinance, only in the past 3 or 4 years has rent been a low enough percentage of my income that I could start seriously saving (though I didn't, until a year ago), since I felt compelled to live up to the lifestyle people thought I had (the classic trap of coming from a "poor" family).
If I could do it over, I'd have probably stayed with my parents for a couple of years and built up a cushion.
But then, would I be the person I am today, or would I have been as adventurous?
I don't feel grown up though, despite being 30.
Maybe just more aware, and somewhat more responsible. And acknowledging of the fact that a large part of my ability to be "independent" is that I was quite lucky to enter the workforce in 1998 as things were starting to boom.
Oh, please. Proportionally, that's nowhere near the number of young people sent to Vietnam, much less WWII. The expense of those wars is again, nowhere near the expense of Vietnam, much less WWII. The casualty rates are at least an order of magnitude lower than Vietnam, which themselves were lower than WWII.
There are many choices for life, and choosing never to get married and never to have kids is exactly the right choice for many people. People don't need to build an army of labor to tend the farm or whatever anymore.
Having said that, the human body is geared to having children young. A lot of women are putting off having children and then finding it either impossible, or learning that the risks of an endless array of defects goes up quite dramatically.
Surrogacy in the sense of "my sperm and your eggs in her body" is new, but men having multiple wives with the younger ones for child bearing is not. So I'd say the concept is old, and only the technology is new.
I'm off to play Dwarf Fortress.
I think so much of this is just economic. My brother lived with a room mate until he was 34. He was an assistant professor at SF State, and his roomate was a high school teacher.
I know two men in their sixties (they are parents of my friends) who raised their children in San Francisco. They were... drumroll... a professor at SF state and a high school teacher. They both purchased houses in their late 20s/early 30s and got on with it.
Maybe the professions I've chosen are unrepresentative samples, maybe the city I live in is unusual for a high cost of housing... but in the early 70s, professors at state and school teachers could buy houses in SF. Now, they can afford to rent a 2br house with a roomate.
There's yer trouble.
Seriously though, what is this article going on about? People complain, I know. Shit sucks. But get over it, and get to work. There is always work to be done, money to be made, goals to be reached and people to marry. It`s not so bad.
We are coming very close to recreating the Japanese culture, with all of their societal problems (40 year old unemployed men living with their parents and reading manga porn all day instead of working).
Some links: http://www.transad.pop.upenn.edu/resources/growup.html
Quote:"In Italy, more than half of all young men live with their parents until age 30. Katherine Newman and Sofya Aptekar, in their chapter in The Price of Independence, trace the transition to adulthood in Europe, finding that youth there are responding to high housing costs, less stable jobs, and higher unemployment by living at home longer."
High housing costs. Less stable jobs. Higher unemployment.
Bam! How do you become an independent adult and start a family against that backdrop?
When you spend the majority of your life in school the last thing you want to do is settle down right away. I am sure that people who did not go the college route are a lot more settled then I am because they had plenty of time to do what they want.
-Because we came out into a terrible economy our professional lives are naturally chaotic.
-Because we have little regard for the 'status quo,' the 'way things are done.' We've been told all our lives that nothing is 'normal'--we grew up thinking that attitude was normal to the extent of never questioning it. See: http://xkcd.com/150/
-Disregard similarly for vaguely Western assumptions. From the article: "Sociologists traditionally define the transition to adulthood as marked by five milestones." As someone else noted, leaving home isn't a global thing.
To put a bit of Angry Young Man spin on it, why should we be concerned with "growing up?" Why should we follow your (this is directed more at the NYT than at anyone here) roadmap? It's not like you did such a great job as far as we can see. (And I know that sentence has been said in some form throughout all of history.)
I have a feeling the hardship of the economic recession(s) will make a lot of people grow up at an earlier age than their parents.
This is a time of humility following a time of arrogance and complacency. A lot of good will come from all the bad that past generations have handed down to their children and grandchildren.
Haven't done anything on my way to adulthood.
Undecided about my future, and career choice.
And, guess what, I just turned 20 last week.
Since, emerging adulthood doesn't happen to everybody, perhaps it is the default "life stage" when we have no monetary requirements, and no expectations (which would really only happen in our situation, other than, perhaps, after retirement, but I have no experience with that one).
I'm not sure what will happen when I finish school, and I prefer not to think about the details of its existence (time after school). But I am considering career paths (ones that vary greatly) which is the main point of the "life stage". (If you have a path decided; you do it, sometimes. If you don't have one decided, but you need income; you do a convenient path. But if you don't have one decided, and don't need one, you linger on it untill the prior is true).
Now, as I said before, I'm undecided, and what is really scary is knowing that we basically jump into a job, with little to no real world experience (not theoretical or technical knowledge, we get that through school) about the career. Internships, would be the closest to what I'm thinking about looking for, but we have to compete for the one's that we want, our dream jobs may not even be looking for interns, and we're basically restricted to one per summer.
Perhaps what would help is a program, that allows for an array of different jobs, that you jump from each month. Assuming if your interested in the career, you would have some technical knowledge about it, and that there are enough companies signed with the program to allow the plethora of jobs.
Okay I'm probably talking out of my a- ...bum, because it'll have the same problems, and I'm sure there are those out there to tell me it won't work.
But I am here, decisions pending.
Plumbers and electricians do fine. People are just too reluctant to eschew college.
Many college-age people I know these days are aware that college is just a marketing ploy for most people, but nobody is going to individually risk calling its bluff.
Personally I correlate this mostly with pricing of housing that is essential and limited resource. Housing is hoarded by capital owners in purpose to lend it to people who have not amassed enough capital (yet).
Because of that price of housing raises uncontrollably to the point where almost no young people can afford not only buying a house but even renting one. In Japan when you start renting a flat you are obliged to give owner customary 'gift' that is worth two years of rent.
Because keeping house empty is small cost for owner it's better to keep it empty than sell it at lower price. This prevents prices from dropping even when there's no demand at high price. Prices of rent follow prices of houses.
Of course all of that is just my uneducated guess.
Seriously, times change, people change, things change. Society didn't collapse before and it's not going to now.
Noting that our society hasn't collapsed so far and using that to infer that opinions like this have no merit is one mother of a sampling bias.
Columnists invent trends and crazy new behaviors that are neither trends or new.
Are you suggesting that you're entitled to be on his lawn or complaining about the way he is asking you to leave?
Actually, they don't. The social norms allow access when you're interacting with the relevant residents.
It's like toys - you get to play with Pat's toys while playing with Pat. Otherwise you ask, and even that can be creepy.
A hundred or so years ago the life expectancy in the west was 40 or something. These days we watch our 80 year-old grandparents work part-time, drive, go on vacation 3 times a year and generally have a good time. Is it really strange then that the urge to "hit the milestones" has lessened.
We 20-somethings ARE growing up, the process just looks different due to a combination of technology and a slow economy. I bet that as we grow older, we will adopt many of the practices that people older than us (the type of people who write articles like this) should have been practicing; i.e. fiscal responsibility.
20-somethings experienced 9/11 during our teens, a time when most people feel invulnerable. At the same time, we've seen the transformative power of technology. I'm old enough to remember booting up DOS from a c-prompt, but young enough to see a world of limitless opportunities. Cautious, but optimistic.
In other aspects of life, we will be measured and thoughtful about our choices. Rushing into commitments simply because we've reached a certain age isn't smart. What isn't mature about taking time to understand why you want to get married, have kids, or commit to a career path?
There will always be people who can't handle pressure or who are just lazy.
The trick is avoiding a Lord of the Flies culture due to extended (pre-)adolescence.
Is that really not enough reason in and of itself? Very few people in school are really adults, unless they have returned from the work force.