2016 MenWithoutWorkAmericasInvisible
- (Eberstadt, 2016) ⇒ Nicholas Eberstadt. (2016). “Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis.” Templeton Press. ISBN:9781599474700
Subject Headings: Working-Age Male Labor Force Participation Rate.
Notes
- Google Books Page: http://books.google.com/books?id=F6kXDQAAQBAJ
- It analyses U.S. Working-Age Male Labor Force Participation.
- It reports that free time is growing for U.S. working age males and suggests that they are mainly spending it badly. It does not offer ideas for increasing well-spent free-time.
- It does not sufficiently support that the "causes" to the problem are due to the labor supply rather than the labor demand, despite the cyclical nature of U.S. labor participation.
- It does not connect the male and female labor participation rate - how they've been tracking each other since 2000.
- It does not propose a Predictive (Timeseries) Model, that would help to expose the contributing components.
Cited By
Quotes
Abstract
Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist and a demographer by training, holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at American Enterprise Institute. He is also a senior advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research, a commissioner on the US Key National Indicators Council, and a member of the Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum. He researches and writes extensively on economic development, foreign aid, global health, demographics, and poverty. In 2012, he wrote A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic and won the Bradley Prize.
Introduction
Over the past two generations, America has suffered a quiet catastrophe. That catastrophe is the collapse of work — for men. In the half century between 1965 and 2015, work rates for the American male spiraled relentlessly downward, and an ominous migration commenced: a “flight from work,” in which ever-growing numbers of working-age men exited the labor force altogether. America is now home to an immense army of jobless men no longer even looking for work — more than seven million alone between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, the traditional prime of working life.
The collapse of work for America’s men is arguably a crisis for our nation — but it is a largely invisible crisis. It is almost never discussed in the public square. Somehow, we as a nation have managed to ignore this problem for decades, even as it has steadily worsened. There is perhaps no other instance in the modern American experience of a social change of such consequence receiving so little consideration by concerned citizens, intellectuals, business leaders, and policymakers.
How big is the “men without work” problem today? Consider a single fact: in 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages twenty-five-to-fifty-four was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, which was at the tail end of the Great Depression.
The general decline of work for grown men and the dramatic, continuing expansion of a class of un-working males (including both those who are ostensibly able-bodied and in the prime of life) constitute a fundamentally new and unfamiliar reality for America. So very new and unfamiliar is this crisis, in fact, that it has until now very largely gone unnoticed and unremarked upon. Our news media, our pundits, and our major political parties have somehow managed to overlook this extraordinary dislocation almost altogether.
One reason the phenomenon has escaped notice is that there have been no obvious outward signs of national distress attending the American male’s massive and and continuing postwar exodus from paid employment: no national strikes, no great riots, no angry social paroxysms. In addition, America today is rich and, by all indications, getting even richer. Hence the end of work for a large, and steadily growing, share of working-age American men has been met to date with public complacency, in part because we evidently can afford to do so. And this is precisely the problem: for the genial indifference with which the rest of society has greeted the growing absence of adult men from the productive economy is in itself powerful testimony that these men have become essentially dispensable.
But the progressive detachment of so many adult American men from the reality and routines of regular paid labor poses a threat to our nation’s future prosperity. It can only result in lower living standards, greater economic disparities, and slower economic growth than we might otherwise expect. And the troubles posed by this male flight from work are by no means solely economic. It is also a social crisis — and, I shall argue, a moral crisis. The growing incapability of grown men to function as breadwinners cannot help but undermine the American family. It casts those who nature designed to be strong into the role of dependents — on their wives or girlfriends, on their aging parents, or on government welfare. Among those who should be most capable of shouldering the burdens of civic responsibilities, it instead encourages sloth, idleness, and vices perhaps more insidious. Whether we choose to recognize it or not, this feature of the American condition — the new “men without work” normal — is inimical to the American tradition of self-reliance; it is subversive of our national ethos and arguably even of our civilization. …
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References
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| Author | volume | Date Value | title | type | journal | titleUrl | doi | note | year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 MenWithoutWorkAmericasInvisible | Nicholas Eberstadt | Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis | 2016 |