
America's Young Adults at 27: Results From a Longitudinal Survey Summary - wallflower
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/nlsyth.nr0.htm
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lkrubner
Interesting:

"By 27 years of age, 32 percent of women had received a bachelor's degree,
compared with 24 percent of men. "

This is a rather strong antidote to the idea that everyone gets a college
degree:

"At 27 years of age, 28 percent of individuals had received their bachelor's
degree while 38 percent had attended some college or received an associate's
degree."

Also interesting:

"At 27 years of age, 34 percent of young adults were married, 20 percent were
unmarried and living with a partner, and 47 percent were single, that is, not
married or living with a partner."

~~~
Camillo
> "By 27 years of age, 32 percent of women had received a bachelor's degree,
> compared with 24 percent of men. "

And because of the huge inertia in political discourse, the gap will have to
reach something like 50% vs 20% before it even becomes acceptable to raise
this as an issue.

~~~
scarmig
Although that sentence doesn't refer to it, something to keep in mind: there
are the race and class variables lurking in there. IIRC if you're upper-middle
class and white (and Asian, I'm guessing), the gender gap disappears.

That doesn't mean that we're not failing our young boys; we certainly are. But
it's always useful to break it down by race and class, especially in the
States.

A deeper question is why? If our culture is biased against boys, you might
expect the gap to appear in all racial and economic classifications. My
hypothesis is that we're in the midst of a giant pauperization: technology is
eating most real jobs. In recent decades, however, there's still been a
relative abundance of salaried jobs that require stability and organizational
and interpersonal skills, which women, either by genes or socialization, are
better at. So there's a real difference in investment payoff for a woman to go
to college than a man, given their existing skill sets [1]. So more women go
to college [2].

For now, at least. Give it a decade or two and I'm predicting an even lower
proportion of men and women both going to college, particularly those in
marginalized communities whose labor wouldn't be improved to the point that
capital needs them to to make more real profits.

[1] One way to confirm that would be whether a man with a college degree makes
less money than a woman with an equivalent degree. Which I think is the case
but want to find a real cite for it.

[2] Another hypothesis: traditional male archetypes are falling by the
wayside. Discarding those is a strategy people are using, consciously or no,
to try to build up the interpersonal skills of men. I don't know how to test
this, however.

~~~
cpwright
>In recent decades, however, there's still been a relative abundance of
salaried jobs that require stability and organizational and interpersonal
skills, which women, either by genes or socialization, are better at.

Another choice is that there are more attractive opportunities for a non-
college educated male than a non-college educated female. Working
construction, landscaping, or other dirty physical jobs is a way for a young
male to work and make money without the necessity of college.

~~~
s_q_b
Some of those jobs pay very well. Technical skill jobs such as plumbers, or
blue collar public sector jobs such as police officers, earn 100K or more. And
contractors who start their own businesses can become outright rich.

------
noname123
Can we start a HN Young Adults at mid to late twenties longitudinal survey?

Statistically speaking, I'm 27, over-educated with a BA degree, single and not
living with a partner, making an 25th percentile salary relatively to the US
average. Saving less than I should of my disposable income but in the 10th
percentile relatively to my peers due to my working professionally for 5.5
years while most of my other over-educated peers in other fields are still
enrolled in post-graduate training. Working in IT and living in an over-priced
metropolitan area.

Anecdotally speaking, I'm ambivalent about marriage and career advancement.
Personal experiences have informed me that relationships are less about true
love and unfailing commitment than being able to compromise, communicate and
having the financial and mental wherewithal to deal with (inter)personal
issues. Unlike my younger self, I'm less anxious about "coupling" and more
keen working on myself and working out my bad habbits/addictions.

Personal experiences have also informed me that IT careers esp. if you're not
working at a Fortune 500 company are quite transient. Programmers (maybe other
professions as well?) are treated more as sub-contractors entities than
tenured employees - meaning that the company will keep you around if you're
contributing efficiently to the bottom-line and cut you without sentiment
otherwise.

Whereas my younger self aspired to "apply to YC, work at Google," I'm less
keen on the promises of potential prestige and fortune but focused more on the
longer term of angling more for more domain specific positions (e.g.,
Computational Biologist vs. Software Engineer on Genomic Data Platform) and
more work-life balance (summer hours, regular 9-5 schedule) to pursue my other
hobbies outside of coding.

Everyone is very different but I'd love to hear what stage other young adults
on HN are (not talking about the wide-eyed CS undergrad still dreaming about
The Social Network), both statistically and anecdotally speaking.

~~~
kevinconroy
For another data point, I'm 31, have a BS and BA, married, two kids, and have
been at my current employer for 7 years, although my job has shifted gears
every few years (programming > team lead > executive).

Out of college I thought I wanted to go the Amazon/Google route, but coupling
placed geographic limitations on the job search. I'm now glad because I would
have gotten sucked into the machine of the Valley and burned out coding.

I always thought I'd want a Masters, but after a few years in industry I fail
to see the value for my particular career goals - experience + salary seems to
trump time away from industry + added debt in my mental calculus.

Goal now is to find good work-life balance to focus on my kids while ensuring
that I'm growing and challenging myself professionally.

Perhaps most interesting part that I'm seeing from my stage of life is that my
wife and I seem to be _way_ ahead of the curve. Parents of our children's
friend (aka your new social circle once you have children) are 5 to 10 years
older than us. Our college friends are just now getting married and/or having
kids, where I now have a 6 and 3 year old.

I've checked off the list of college, marriage, house, kids, career and
although I love my situation, it's odd that society has run out of "goals."
There's no gold star you get once you check them all of - just a day-to-day
routine. I'm not suggesting that you should pursue these things, but if you
don't have them all yet and are striving for them, know that it's the journey,
not the destination, that counts here.

~~~
cpwright
I'm 31 with a Ph.D., married, two kids. I've had 3 employers in the last 7
years since I graduated. I can relate to the bit about most other parents
being older, my son is 8; and we are probably at least in the bottom quartile
as far as age of the parents in his class.

------
mkoryak
Ok, how many of us reading this are high school dropouts?

~~~
anonydsfsfs
Me. I dropped out due to depression, got a GED, went to a community college,
then transferred to a university and got my BS.

------
colmvp
Too bad they didn't include Asian Americans in the survey. Much
disappointment. Census data from Pew shows a lot of interesting differences
between Asians relative to other races in America.

Anyways, interesting to note that women of all races get some college or a
Bachelor's degree at a higher rate than their respective male counterparts.

Also interesting is the correlation between highest attained education level
and likelihood of having a child by 27. Anecdotally, all friends in my various
circles are college educated and only started having kids after the age of 29.

~~~
blahedo
> _Too bad they didn 't include Asian Americans in the survey._

What makes you say that? They said it was a nationally representative sample,
which I would assume includes a substantial number of Asian Americans.

~~~
pedrosorio
The fact that white/hispanic/african americans are referred to when discussing
the results by ethnicity and there is no mention of asian americans.

------
cnaut
Interesting that the only pattern that was consistent across gender, race, and
economic status was this:

"Despite being in the labor force a greater percentage of weeks, individuals
held fewer jobs from ages 23 to 26 than they did from ages 18 to 22. While
ages 18 to 22, individuals held an average of 4.3 jobs and were out of the
labor force 26 percent of weeks. From ages 23 to 26, individuals held 2.7 jobs
while being out of the labor force 16 percent of weeks."

~~~
srv02
At 18-22 people are very young and, generally speaking, have very little life
experience. They are looking for their place in life, so it's not surprising
they are trading places easily. As they mature, they become more stable and
better realize what they need/want in life (and job is a major part of life
for most of us), so it's only natural they start sticking more to what they
found.

~~~
kourt
This seems a little too psychological: even people who know _exactly_ what
they plan to do at a very young age are likely to change jobs many times
during those years.

I spent 18-22 enrolled at one university earning a degree in the major that I
listed on my application packet, but I interned at a different company each
summer. If I'd worked during the academic year, I'd probably have had several
additional jobs during the period: folding towels at the gym, computer
laboratory attendant, resident advisor, off-campus food service and off-campus
retail.

~~~
kourt
PS: I'm not just trying to pick a fight here: I dislike political discourse
where the challenges of being a young adult are attributed to imagined moral,
emotional, or intellectual deficiencies of people under 30 / 40 / 50.

Similarly, one could argue that people accumulate debt 18-22 because their
immature brains are too stupid to understand cause and effect, ignoring more
salient facts like: 1) 18 year olds have not had time to establish specialized
professional experience so their earning potential is low due to no fault of
their own 2) Immigration and trade policies have deliberately and drastically
reduced the earning potential of unskilled labor (which includes basically all
18 year olds, including future MD's and PhD's) 3) Housing costs and especially
education costs have skyrocketed in the past 40 years 4) Education is
increasingly financed through debt rather than loans.

This is not as much fun as "kids today are so stupid!", but IMO a far more
accurate explanation for why a current college student will incur more debt
than a Boomer who could earn enough each summer hauling hay or working in a
unionized factory to pay a year's tuition at State U.

------
simon_
Interesting: approximately half of this (my) cohort's children do not live
with married parents.

EDIT: Even more interesting, 41% of single (living alone) women at 27 have a
child.

~~~
colmvp
AFAIK, there's a growing trend of children being born out of wedlock at least
based on studies I've seen on Pew Social Trends.

------
JoeAltmaier
There has got to be a graphical way to present this study. It could reveal far
more than cherry-picking summary stats and writing them out in dry prose.

