(2022-02-08) Yang The Data Are Clear The Boys Are Not All Right

Andrew Yang: The data are clear: The boys are not all right. Here is one of the biggest problems facing America: Boys and men across all regions and ethnic groups have been failing, both absolutely and relatively, for years.

The data are clear. Boys are more than twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADD), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; are five times as likely to spend time in juvenile detention; and are less likely to finish high school.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get better when boys become adults. Men now make up only 40.5 percent of college students. Male community college enrollment declined by 14.7 percent in 2020 alone, compared with 6.8 percent for women. Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms.

Economic transition has been a big contributor. More than two-thirds of manufacturing workers are men; the sector has lost more than 5 million jobs since 2000.

Not just coincidentally, “deaths of despair” — those caused by suicide, overdose and alcoholism — have surged to unprecedented levels among middle-aged men over the past 20 years.

As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline... from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.

Vocational education and opportunities should be redoubled; the nation’s public school system should start the process for early age groups, and apprenticeship programs should be supported by the federal government. (votech)

Drives for national service and contribution, such as an American Exchange Program or national service years, should be resuscitated. And businesses and industries that employ large numbers of men, such as manufacturing, should be invested in and reinvigorated.

A number of my friends have become detached from society. Everyone hits a snag at some point — losing a job, facing a divorce — but my male friends seem less able to bounce back. Male dysfunction tends to take on an air of nihilism and dropping out (drop-out).

Here’s the simple truth I’ve heard from many men: We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves. We deal with idleness terribly.