Liberal Policies Are Devastating America’s Young

Especially America’s young men. That is the message of a report just released by the Census Bureau, titled The Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood: 1975–2016. You can read the report for yourself, but to sum up, the economics and demographics of young adulthood are changing, all right–for the worse.

The Census Bureau finds that about one-third of all young adults, ages 18-34, are living with their parents. That is up from 26% in 1975. Of course, there is nothing wrong with living with your parents when you are 18. The more troubling statistic is that over 8 million Americans aged 25-34 are living with their mothers and fathers. Well over half are men. Of this cohort, there are more than 2.6 million who are not working. The Census Bureau says:

Of young people living in their parents’ home, 1 in 4 are idle, that is they neither go to school nor work.

The data are especially grim for young men:

More young men are falling to the bottom of the income ladder. In 1975, only 25 percent of men, aged 25 to 34, had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men. (Incomes for both years are in 2015 dollars.)

The Center has devoted a lot of attention to this issue. We have been playing this radio ad across the state of Minnesota. It talks about the fact that liberal policies are bad for young people:

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As you may know, the Center has launched an important multi-year project that is intended to promote alternatives to four-year college degrees among Minnesota’s students and parents. The quickest and surest way out of Mom and Dad’s basement is a good job in manufacturing, construction, and so on. We launched our project last week with a kickoff event that you can read about here.

Liberal policies have devastated America’s young people by saddling them with trillions in debt, driving up the cost of health care and housing, and limiting economic growth, thereby minimizing job opportunities. The harmful effect of liberal policies on the young was the subject of our most recent lunch forum, featuring Diana Furchgott-Roth.

The betrayal of America’s young by the Left is a topic that we will return to over and over in the months and years to come.