Is it harder for young people to get established today?

[Darth Wong]

I saw an interesting article on this over at Netscape News:

Only 31% of Men Achieve This By Age 30

The true measure of adulthood is not 18 or 21. The true measure of adulthood is reaching these benchmarks: leaving home, finishing school, getting married, having a child, and being financially independent.

By that standard only 31 percent of men and 46 percent of women have reached adulthood by age 30, reports The Washington Post of a study from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1960, fully 65 percent of men and 77 percent of women had achieved these accomplishments by age 30.

Why the incredible delay for young people today? One simple reason. (And it's not because the kids are slackers or their parents coddle them far too long.) "The primary reason for a prolonged early adulthood is that it now takes much longer to secure a full-time job that pays enough to support a family," lead researcher Frank J. Furstenberg Jr. writes in Contexts, a journal of the American Sociological Association.

Baby boomers and their parents had much greater access to well-paying jobs with good benefits than do today's twentysomethings. In addition, the oldsters enjoyed more government assistance for higher education and affordable housing.

Robert Billingham, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Indiana University, told The Associated Press that the delay to adulthood can also be partly explained by our society's emphasis on attending college. If you go to college, you'll want to pursue postgraduate studies. If you pursue postgraduate studies, you'll want to find a well-paying and prestigious job. If you find a well-paying and prestigious job, you'll want a promotion. And before you know it, you haven't married and started a family yet.

So what can we do to help kids become adults sooner? Furstenberg and his team recommend expansion of military and alternative national service programs.

This is a worrisome trend. Is it really healthy for society if the vast majority of young people take so long to get established? I don't think so. And I also think it's ironic that the older people had more government financial support for education and housing when they were younger, but they're the ones who have been responsible for gutting those programs ever since.

When the 20th century is examined at a distance by historians someday, I have no doubt that they will conclude the Baby Boomer generation was also the most selfish, craven generation ever.

[Col. Crackpot]

i fear for "generation y" who will bear the brunt of the baby boomers financial demand. They will be the ones whose financial growth will be most stunted when the baby boomers start to retire. They will be far worse off than my generation.

[The Kernel]

While there is something to be said for "paying your dues" I agree that this is a disturbing trend in general.

[Mr Bean]

This is a worrisome trend. Is it really healthy for society if the vast majority of young people take so long to get established? I don't think so. And I also think it's ironic that the older people had more government financial support for education and housing when they were younger, but they're the ones who have been responsible for gutting those programs ever since.

Part of that has to do with the fact that most of the high paying jobs today require a collage degree, true it is still possible for some kid to walk out of high school and make a decent living with a good promotion path

But its a heckavlot harder than twenty years ago

[Enforcer Talen]

-shrugs- Im planning marriage and kids at 25 or later.

the prereqs for a good job involve a college degree. . .

[Stravo]

It's not just the College degree. Life has simply become more expensive. Here in NYC the standard of living is absolutely absurd. You can't possibly support a family on a standard $20-25,000 starting salary that most College grads get. The rents are obscene and everything is expensive as hell. Most of my friends are rooming or still living with their parents until they can get a nice nest egg toegther (or shovel themselves out of debt)

I definately think that getting established takes much longer than it did when our parents were climbing up the ladder.

[The Cleric]

And the report requires a family in it's measure. People are getting married and having children later, at least the one's who get the degrees and achieve fiscal independance.

[Darth Wong]

It's hard to believe now there was once a time that a guy could have a wife, kids, and his own house at 25. And that this same guy is fully intending to ass-rape you and your children in order to pay for his retirement.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

It's probably also hard due to the nature of college. You can go to college, get a PhD. or a masters, and people don't wnat to hire you because theyw ould have to pay you more. THis is what I have experienced so far with Teaching positions.

SOme degree's they build up in college, but you find out you can't really get a job or they get low pay even if you have a good degree.

[Edi]

And the report requires a family in it's measure. People are getting married and having children later, at least the one's who get the degrees and achieve fiscal independance.

For a good reason: That is the only way for a society to perpetuate itself, because if people don't form families and produce children, population declines and the society can't sustain itself. Three children per family is required for a modest population growth, 2.<something> is required to just sustain a given level.

Anyhow, there is also another worrisome trend: Everyone is encouraged to get a higher education. Why is this bad? There are only a limited number of jobs that really require a university degree, and there is a huge surplus of people with those qualifications. My father said that roughly 7 to 10 percent of jobs in the public sector require university degrees. The comparable number for the private sector is higher (I don't know what), and obviously higher for technological industries, but there are not enough jobs comparable to education level to sustain the kind of 30% to 40% of the kids of any given year getting higher education degrees.

Meanwhile, basic jobs that re required for the society to function are suffering from shortage of qualified workers, and companies that do basic building maintenance, renovations, plumbing work and so forth have enough work to keep them busy for the next 20 or 30 years, and they can basically charge what they want because there are not enough of them to go around. Here at least it is financially and career-wise often much better to get some basic vocational degree (electrician, plumber etc) after high school (9th grade) than to go to college and then university. They can get as much work as they can possibly do right after they get a two or three year basic degree and those jobs pay as well as higher education ones, though the top tier of the latter is obviously a lot better paid, but it's just a tiny fraction of that particular job pool.

I know several people who did just that and they are far ahead of those like me who took the higher education route (and I failed in that too, so my prospects are even bleaker). I wouldn't be living on my own, not at the standard of living I have anyway, if it wasn't for a shitload of stuff that my parents have done for me and my siblings, and that has only been possible because of my dad's high paying job. I'm singularly privileged in this regard, and I hold no illusions about that. My oldest friend is an iofficer in the Finnish military, and he has a mortgage to pay off and two kids, so money is tight for them, but he has done most things for himself and he hasn't had it easy. My closest friend has a university degree in biology as soon as he gets his gets his thesis work done, and he is paid about the same amount or less for his job with a research unit in the faculty, €300 less than what a typical salary for a basic office job is. He'd have it harder too if he hadn't had the same kind of support from his parents as I did, though he has had quite a bit less need for it than I have (having a job tends to make a difference, and I hope to soon rejoin the ranks of the working people).

Bottom line, a higher education is not absolutely necessary for doing well, it is sufficient to get job skills in the kind of field that is not going to go away (hard to outsource plumbing work or construction to India, for example), and once the big generations retire, there's going to be a drastic shift in the job market. In Europe there is anyway, we've lower population growth than the US.

Edi

[Gil Hamilton]

I also think that people need more college experience, on top of the fact that college is more expensive, to get a decent job. I'm probably going to be in school till I'm about 26 at least in order to get a job, and that's assuming I don't attempt to join the military after I get my bachelors again (this time holding a degree, which will mean I'll get more love from them than I did before). Or it's quite possible that I could be one of those people who are nearly perpetually doing my masters one or two courses at a time so that I can have a full time job to pay for it. It's ugly for me to get established. Real ugly.

[Edi]

It's probably also hard due to the nature of college. You can go to college, get a PhD. or a masters, and people don't wnat to hire you because theyw ould have to pay you more. THis is what I have experienced so far with Teaching positions.

SOme degree's they build up in college, but you find out you can't really get a job or they get low pay even if you have a good degree.

Surplus of qualified work force, and/or poorly defined qualification requirements for the job. DW is also right on in his comments.

Edi

[Alan Bolte]

It's largely the college degree. At this point, those with a college degree are 'haves' and those without are 'have nots' in a very real way. That's not to say that the job market for a college graduate is perfect, but you are far more likely to get a much better paying job, as the average income gap between college grads and high school grads is amazingly wider than it was twenty, even thirty years ago, if I'm reading the charts I've got correctly. And that's just adjusted for inflation. Never mind the overall cost of living, as Stravo mentioned. Of course, cities like New York are something of an extreme, and frankly I'm guessing that the cost of moving is far less than the cost of staying unless you already have a good job with a college degree there.

Certainly the loss of good jobs for High School grads is part of the problem, but it can't be the entire issue if you check the timing, IIRC. What we're seeing, though, is the price of College skyrocket in the same way the income gap has over the same period of time. Without massive government scholarships or some other balancing factor, this increase in prices is going to make people think twice about getting a college education, no matter how nice the income is, because some people just don't have enough starting money to ever deal with the costs one must pay while in college, nevermind the debt. Besides, your averge person doesn't usually make the decision not to go to college based on accurate data so much as a subjective interpretation of whether it's worth the money.

So, from there, only those people whose earnings increase to keep up with costs are going to be sending their kids to college. Obviously, people who aren't entirely stupid want the better wages which have always come with college, so there's always a nice demand there and an increase in the income gap makes it more so. The availability of affordable education being down, and the wages of those who can afford it being up and increasingly requiring a higher education, creates a further impetus for the price to go up. Vicious cycle.

The above is, at least in part, an arguement my economics professor made on the subject, but I don't see any problem with it so far. 'course, he said in econ lingo, which might be more accurate, but is a bit less obvious for the understanding.

The quality of primary and secondary education in this country may be a problem, but I don't know that it's actually a factor in this college issue yet.

Now, on the one hand, I'm wondering what that statistic in the OP is if you take away any one of those factors. Say 'having a child'. That ought to be a big one. Financial independence is really a larger question. My dad was independent basically as soon as he left college (was something like 6 or 7 years after HS, I think) and quite possibly before that, I'm not sure. He was married by 28 and didn't have a kid until 30 - nearly 31 really. He might be on the later side of the baby boomers, but he counts, and he's just barely within the limit described. What would another few years before marriage and children have meant? Anything at all?

On the other hand, one might say it's a tad worrysome for women, given basic medical facts of fertility and % chance for problems, etc. IIRC, 30 isn't a bad cutoff time to say "If you're going to have a family, why don't you already have a baby?" If one assumes men tend to marry younger women, a lower percentage of men with a wife and kids by 30 is to be expected, and I suppose a wide gap is neither expected nor necessarily desirable, so perhaps this measure, while not perfect, isn't so bad, but I'm still sort of wondering.

Anyhow, saying 'Well, people think they have to go to college in our society so they're holding off on the family thing' as Mr. Billingham did is kinda dumb, as you increasingly need that money just to keep yourself above water, not to mention dependants. And they recommend military expansion and service programs? So we tax the haves to give the have-nots wages in return for going overseas and risking their lives? Is that really a direction we want to steer our society in?

Sorry for the rambling, just can't help myself today.

[aerius]

With the trends towards contract work, especially in the high-tech field, it becomes a bitch to get any long security or financial planning done. I could buy a house now and if my contracts keep getting renewed and I can keep finding new contracts, great, I can have financial independance. Problem is any contract could be my last one, and who knows how long it could take till I find another one to work. With that kind of uncertainty, I ain't getting too far, whereas with a steady full-time job I can take out a mortgage, buy a house, and do all those other things without worrying where the money's going to come from.

It's a disturbing trend for sure, out of all my 20-something friends, only a handful have managed to find full-time employment, and only 2 of them are working in their field of study. The rest are hopping from job to job, never knowing where they'll be in a few months. It's just a complete bitch to secure long-term steady work. I'm 25, and I've already had over twice as many jobs as my father held in his entire 40+ year career.

[Alan Bolte]

Oh, and yeah, Edi's right. We need to find some way to promote skilled labor as an alternative to college or unskilled labor. It seems to have become neglected.

[Wicked Pilot]

I finished school, left home, and became financially independent a few days after my 22nd birthday, yet I'm not 'established' because I'm single. What kind of BS is that?

[Hamel]

Only one person out of my high school class has been able to keep a job in the field we studied, and his is mostly menial IT work like installing OS and routing cable through offices. Besides him, the rest of the class that aren't still living with their parents are having it rough.

[Stravo]

I finished school, left home, and became financially independent a few days after my 22nd birthday, yet I'm not 'established' because I'm single. What kind of BS is that?

The financial ability to raise and support a family is far greater than just looking after yourself. Like it or not society drives us to get married and start families and that is the mark of having 'made it' in many eyes.

[Darth Wong]

I finished school, left home, and became financially independent a few days after my 22nd birthday, yet I'm not 'established' because I'm single. What kind of BS is that?

Fatherhood is a huge, expensive, life-changing thing that you haven't done yet.

[Colonel Olrik]

Well, I'm 25 and I've done all except getting married and have kids. I do have the money for it, specially if my wife has a similar salary (like my current girlfriend.. *hopes for the future*)

[Col. Crackpot]

And the report requires a family in it's measure. People are getting married and having children later, at least the one's who get the degrees and achieve fiscal independance.

My wife and i are doing precisely that. We both make good money but aving a child is expensive today and we want to have a parent at home to care for our kid. It is important to have something to fall back on if fate takes a turn. That is why we are saving now. It's nothing more than responsible adulthood. I have three years before I reach that magic 31 number. If all goes well i'll beat it by a year or two.

[Darth Wong]

The people who are saying that they don't think a family is necessary in order to consider yourself "established" (apart from being wrong, since it means there's this huge thing you haven't done yet) are ignoring the fact that this benchmark is being used to compare modern young people to the young people of the past, who were able to do all of those things by a young age. Hence the point about the shift in prosperity and the greater difficulty of becoming established remains.

[Aaron]

It's hard to believe now there was once a time that a guy could have a wife, kids, and his own house at 25. And that this same guy is fully intending to ass-rape you and your children in order to pay for his retirement.

I have that now, minus the house. If the military hadn't forcibly retired me than I would have the house. By the way I'm 26.

[Wicked Pilot]

The financial ability to raise and support a family is far greater than just looking after yourself.

Actually I could support a family financially as of now. In fact, within three years I'll make more money that my parents ever did when they were raising me. Of course maturity wise I don't think I'm ready for that step just yet, or maybe ever, but it was my impression that the article was more concerned with the financial aspect of becoming 'established'.

[Darth Wong]

Obviously, some people can do it: the study didn't say the proportion had dropped to zero. But the proportion is much lower than it has been for generations past, hence there is a trend. The military offers security to people; that is not a secret, and that is also one of the things they mentioned in the article.