8 ms·

America's Young Adults at 27: Results From a Longitudinal Survey Summary

71 points by wallflower 13y ago

lkrubner 13y ago
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."
- cheez 13y ago
  These stats are amazing for me to read as it reminds me of the bubble I live in.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    HN itself is a bubble. Who comes here? Techies. Tech is not representative of other industries at all.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  Agreed on the college thing. If you were to believe media reports, > 70% of young adults have college degrees (and large loans accompanying those degrees).
  - randomdata 13y ago
    That's interesting. I've never heard anyone claim above 30%. Though I've read the enrolment rate is in the 60% range, which could make your loan part true (within some margin of error). Canada, considered the most educated nation, has, if I recall correctly, 64% of the population with some post-secondary achievement. But note that includes university, community college, trades, etc.
    - mgkimsal 13y ago
      I'm not saying media reports claim those numbers, but, at least in the media I read/watch, the student loan debt problem is presented as something affect a large majority of young people. Really, it's affecting a large majority of young college-going students (which is probably self-evident) but it's generally not clarified as such.
- rwc 13y ago
  Contrast the 34% married figure and 47% single figure with this fact: "Nearly 41 percent of young adults had their own or their partner's child in the household at age 27."
  - pedrosorio 13y ago
    More than 50% were married or cohabiting. That would make it possible for every single child to be in a household being raised by a couple. This is probably the figure you are looking for: "Sixty-five percent of married individuals had at least one child in the home, compared with 21 percent of single individuals"
- Camillo 13y ago
  > "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.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    I'm sure to some groups it will never be acceptable. 100% vs 20%? We like those numbers, but let's see if we can't lower the second one! Thankfully while real, those are fringe groups. So I guess my point is that there will probably always be resistance/people who reject bringing it up out-of-hand.
  - ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
    I doubt it. In America "victim culture", "David vs Goliath", "hatred of the rich", "_____ privilage" and "the haves and have nots" mindset controls who gets sympathy and who does not. If women have less degrees or make less than men guess who gets the blame? Where as if men have less degrees or make less than women in the household it's automatically assumed it's men's own fault and no one is to blame. Why? Because only the squeaky wheel gets the grease, if you don't squeak you don't get grease.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    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.
- eldavido 13y ago
  28% is about the national average in the US, interesting that this isn't changing much in young vs old. [1]. Also, the distribution is quite bimodal, a small number of US MSAs have tons of college grads (Boston, SF, NYC) vs. huge tracts of the US with few graduates at all. [1] "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray, highly recommended.
- danjayh 13y ago
  I really wish they'd broken that group down a little more to identify how many had obtained advanced degrees. I'm curious about whether there's truth to the idea that 'the master's degree is the new bachelor's degree.'
cnaut 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - cnaut 13y ago
    Yes, this definitely makes sense. I'm just surprised that this is consistent across all those dimensions when almost nothing else is.
  - kourt 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
noname123 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
simon_ 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
colmvp 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > 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 13y ago
    The fact that white/hispanic/african americans are referred to when discussing the results by ethnicity and there is no mention of asian americans.
mkoryak 13y ago
Ok, how many of us reading this are high school dropouts?
- anonydsfsfs 13y ago
  Me. I dropped out due to depression, got a GED, went to a community college, then transferred to a university and got my BS.
- rdl 13y ago
  Me (dropped out to go to MIT early; dropped out of MIT to do a startup)
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
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.

71 points by wallflower 13y ago

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."

cheez 13y ago
These stats are amazing for me to read as it reminds me of the bubble I live in.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  HN itself is a bubble. Who comes here? Techies. Tech is not representative of other industries at all.
mgkimsal 13y ago
Agreed on the college thing. If you were to believe media reports, > 70% of young adults have college degrees (and large loans accompanying those degrees).
- randomdata 13y ago
  That's interesting. I've never heard anyone claim above 30%. Though I've read the enrolment rate is in the 60% range, which could make your loan part true (within some margin of error). Canada, considered the most educated nation, has, if I recall correctly, 64% of the population with some post-secondary achievement. But note that includes university, community college, trades, etc.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    I'm not saying media reports claim those numbers, but, at least in the media I read/watch, the student loan debt problem is presented as something affect a large majority of young people. Really, it's affecting a large majority of young college-going students (which is probably self-evident) but it's generally not clarified as such.
rwc 13y ago
Contrast the 34% married figure and 47% single figure with this fact: "Nearly 41 percent of young adults had their own or their partner's child in the household at age 27."
- pedrosorio 13y ago
  More than 50% were married or cohabiting. That would make it possible for every single child to be in a household being raised by a couple. This is probably the figure you are looking for: "Sixty-five percent of married individuals had at least one child in the home, compared with 21 percent of single individuals"
Camillo 13y ago
> "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.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  I'm sure to some groups it will never be acceptable. 100% vs 20%? We like those numbers, but let's see if we can't lower the second one! Thankfully while real, those are fringe groups. So I guess my point is that there will probably always be resistance/people who reject bringing it up out-of-hand.
- ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
  I doubt it. In America "victim culture", "David vs Goliath", "hatred of the rich", "_____ privilage" and "the haves and have nots" mindset controls who gets sympathy and who does not. If women have less degrees or make less than men guess who gets the blame? Where as if men have less degrees or make less than women in the household it's automatically assumed it's men's own fault and no one is to blame. Why? Because only the squeaky wheel gets the grease, if you don't squeak you don't get grease.
- scarmig 13y ago
  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.
eldavido 13y ago
28% is about the national average in the US, interesting that this isn't changing much in young vs old. [1]. Also, the distribution is quite bimodal, a small number of US MSAs have tons of college grads (Boston, SF, NYC) vs. huge tracts of the US with few graduates at all. [1] "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray, highly recommended.
danjayh 13y ago
I really wish they'd broken that group down a little more to identify how many had obtained advanced degrees. I'm curious about whether there's truth to the idea that 'the master's degree is the new bachelor's degree.'

cnaut 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- cnaut 13y ago
  Yes, this definitely makes sense. I'm just surprised that this is consistent across all those dimensions when almost nothing else is.
- kourt 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.

noname123 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

simon_ 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

colmvp 13y ago

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 13y ago
> 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 13y ago
  The fact that white/hispanic/african americans are referred to when discussing the results by ethnicity and there is no mention of asian americans.

mkoryak 13y ago

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

anonydsfsfs 13y ago
Me. I dropped out due to depression, got a GED, went to a community college, then transferred to a university and got my BS.
rdl 13y ago
Me (dropped out to go to MIT early; dropped out of MIT to do a startup)

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

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.