The unemployment rate for people with a college degree or higher is 5 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1990s again.
But college graduates are only 30 percent of the country. For the rest of the population, the jobs picture is grimmer. For people without a high-school degree, the unemployment rate is more than 15 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1930s again.
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The unemployment rates are part of a growing divergence between the fortunes of the college educated and the rest of the country, including proverbial Middle America. In his new study, “When Marriage Disappears,” University of Virginia scholar Brad Wilcox details how the college-educated have embraced traditional mores and habits — especially the formation of stable families — while they erode among everyone else.
Our elites, broadly defined as the top third of our society, aren’t nearly as decadent as advertised. According to Wilcox’s data, the highly educated (with a college diploma or higher) are less likely to divorce, less likely to have children out of wedlock, and less likely to commit adultery than the moderately educated (high-school degree or some college) and the least-educated (no high-school diploma).
The moderately educated might be called the lower-middle class or upper-working class. Wilcox refers to them as the “solid middle”: “They are not upscale, but they are not poor. They don’t occupy any of the margins, yet they are often overlooked, even though they make up the largest share of the American middle class.” He documents an equally disturbing separation between the top and the rest, and a convergence between the middle and the bottom.
In the 1970s, 73 percent of both the highly and moderately educated were in intact first marriages. That figure plummeted across the board, yet the moderately educated (45 percent in intact first marriages) are now closer to the least-educated (39 percent) than to the highly educated (56 percent).
The number for out-of-wedlock births is starker. From 1982 until today, the percentage of non-marital births among the moderately educated exploded from 13 percent to 44 percent. That figure is close to the least-educated (54 percent) and a vast distance from the highly educated (only 6 percent). Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation compares the dynamic to a carpet unraveling from the bottom, as illegitimacy first took hold among the poor and now works up the income scale.
This phenomenon is a calamity for the non-college educated. Growing up in a two-parent family brings enormous social advantages. Children in these families, Wilcox notes, are more likely “to graduate from high school, finish college, become gainfully employed, and enjoy a stable family life themselves.” An institution absolutely critical to children’s prospects is slowly becoming associated with the upper third.
Social trends are intertwining with economic trends, like increased unemployment and declining wages, in a downward spiral. “High school–educated young men today,” Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University writes, “may be the first generation in memory to earn less than their fathers did.” This economic pressure makes it harder to marry; the lack of marriage, in turn, denies men crucial social stability (married men earn more than single men with the same education and job histories).
All of this points to a slow-motion social and economic evisceration of a swath of Middle America. Wilcox even invokes the possibility of “a 21st century version of a traditional Latin-American model of family life, where only a comparatively small oligarchy enjoys a stable married and family life — and the economic and social fruits that flow from strong marriages.”
At the moment, American politics offers two separate, distinct ways not to address these issues: Either the brain-dead populism of the Left that blames it all on trade and the decline of unions, or the brain-dead populism of the Right that extols the working class without taking serious note of its agony. We’ll have to do better: There’s a crisis in the middle.
"Either the brain-dead populism of the Left that blames it all on trade and the decline of unions, or the brain-dead populism of the Right that extols the working class without taking serious note of its agony. We’ll have to do better."
Lame, very lame. You spout a bunch of statistics that somebody else gathered, and then point out two things that won't solve the problems. Well? Do you have any ideas?
I think that a lot of this problem identified by Rich Lowrey is caused by a large decline in the numbers of factory jobs, and by very high levels of immigration. Both of these trends have reduced the equilibrium wages for non-college educated Americans. We can change our immigration policies by simply enforcing the laws that are already on the books, and we can improve our national environment for manufacturing by reducing regulation on business.
I think the GOP would be wise to talk about these issues over the next two years, and propose changes to our laws that are designed to improve the economic climate for middle America.
Born in '81, in my lifetime conservatives have always harped on the institution of marriage as being sacred. But if it is so sacred, why shouldn't it be reserved for the best and the brightest? Why can't it be society's reward for having kept your nose (and credit score) clean?
I see nothing unconservative with entitling the elite to be the gatekeepers of matrimony. They've paid more than their share in taxes for the privilege.
It is not just 19th century Nietzsche, but 21st century uber-Americans who recognize how the spirit of nobility resides in seeking the privilege of the fewest. ("Genealogy of Morals, Essay I, Sec. 16.)
Middle-income homes use to have one parent providing income and the other parent providing education at home during the critical formative years of a child's life (birth to age 7).
Now middle-income homes require two wage earners in the field and children are regulated to marginal day-care and public education institutions. Those environments are devoid of adequate moral and cultural guidance due to avoid offending potential customers.
Instead of getting critical education from their parents, children are drowning in a sea of lowest-common-denominator noise and liberal advocacy. No one should be surprised that many children in such environments grow to become adults that won't embrace core values.
Higher-income families can afford to have one parent stay at home, or at least direct child-care to an environment more in keeping with the family's mores.
Part of what's happening is that a much larger proportion of the population is getting college degrees now than 25 or 50 years ago. So the "top" layer of your solid middle, those most likely for reasons of ability or culture to do well in terms of employment and marriage, were no-or-some-college then but now have degrees and thus fall in a different category. Not to say we don't have a problem, but it may not be as bad as these numbers suggest.
cdcscott: The problem is, those jobs went abroad because they were not worth paying enough for to provide an American middle class existence. I doubt they will ever come back. If manufacturing regulations were reduced, even if some factories did re-open I can't imagine that anybody is ever going to pay an American $25 an hour for what a poor Indonesian will do for $0.25.
The real question is, how are people going to be able to provide a middle class existence who are only average in intelligence? The left has its answer: government guns will be pointed at others, and their resources forcibly handed to the less capable for, at best, performing make-work government jobs.
eloris, please enlighten me: for any time other than the present, when was the institution of marriage not sacred in America (or any other nation/culture/society worth giving a toot about)?
Anything that is sacred requires some measure of exclusion.
Why not follow the Bible and separate the wheat from the chaff? As the chaff falls to the filthy earth, why should conservatives care if such chaff takes to racing toward the bottom?
Sure, many are called to marriage, but few will answer.
We have, as a society, allowed the pursuit of personal desires to overshadow and diminish our personal responsibilities. It is the culture paradigm of "Whatever Makes You Happy". Living that way has disastrous results: broken or non-existent marriages, neglected children, over-dependence on government, the deterioration of natural, non-governmental safety nets. When life is all about me, society crumbles. When life is about our duties, society is strengthened. Over the last century, many forces have worked to steer our society straight into the void of "Me". As long as individuals continue on this course, our society is literally doomed. Government policies make it easy for us to live without duty. Entitlements limit the pain of mistakes and reduce our need and ability to perform the duty of helping our neighbors. Laws that weaken marriage weaken families. Duty and family are foundations for civilization. When they are weakened, our civilization declines. The answer is complex. changes in policy, meaning less government in all areas, is an imperative. However a change in our hearts must also happen as well. I suspect that our civilization will die before either of those changes are made.
"Instead of getting critical education from their parents, children are drowning in a sea of lowest-common-denominator noise and liberal advocacy"
Opine
Having lived thru the end of the Great Depression, WW2, Korea Police action and the Cold War, my witness has been to see the above quote enacted across the board.
Lowest Common Denominator values, these and the attendant moral decay, IE It is ok if the others are doing "it", within the USA Electorate have essentially brought us to the stats listed in the article. One can discuss Noblese Oblige but the end of all this is deterioration of the Amercian Spirit, American Society and the Founders values system we call our Government.
end
Big business and big government, the problem is the same!
Big Government is suspect to a conservative because of the chilling effect it has on liberty. Starting in the 20th century and climaxing now is the quasi-governmental effect of big business which should be treated with the same suspicion as big government. For example, the troubling "conservative" decision of the Supreme Court in the 2009 case Citizens United vs. FEC that a corporation is a citizen deserving the Free Speach protection under the 1st Amendment is shocking, both to myself and the founders of the constitution. Common sense tells us the decision is wrong; and, common sense is what the four "conservative" justices lacked in their barely majority decision. Notwithstanding legal trickery and thinly veiled self-interest, a corporation is not a person; nevertheless, this idea has wormed its way into the political apple spoiling both the single piece of fruit and the basket of fruit in which it is stored. Slowly, the cancer of greed championed by big business is destroying both the body politic and the nation. Big business' amoral pursuit of profits has led to their purchase of influence in government; so much influence that it is now greater than the influence of the citizenry. Until the middle class revolts against big business in favor of small business, the middle class will be exploited into annihilation.
Landrum..what's this? The greater the amount of taxes you pay entitles you to some elitist status for marriage..oh please..go back to 1981 and start over.
I live in and have lived in some of this country's wealthiest communities and divorce is the norm. I haven't a clue where you get your information.
Completely agree with Marty Lund. I would add two points. First, there are plenty of people at all income levels that are abdicating their responsibilities as parents. So much easier to let the kids play video games or hang out on line than to monitor homework and chores. Also, the public school system, where most American kids are, has completely removed personal morality/standards of behavior from the curriculum. Consequences for bad behavior are few and inconsistently enforced. Kids are taught to respect differences in cultures and respect for the environment, but not respect for rules or standards of social behavior. Of course basic manners and morality should be taught at home, but they should also be reinforced at school - they certainly were in the public school I attended way back in the 1960's and '70's!! How can children grow up to be responsible adults ( and therefore be able to hold jobs and become good parents themselves) if they are never taught how to be so?
The combination of union power and all kinds of regulation to "protect the environment" and "the consumer" have knocked the bottom out of the American economy. Whole categories of jobs have been moved overseas to "unregulated sweatshops".
The jobs that stayed are the nice clean jobs; lawyers, accountants, generic MBAs, marketers, etc. Those are the jobs the ruling elite know and like.
This generation of college students and graduates has a very distorted view of how wealth creation works. The leading model they see is web business, where you give a virtual product away for free, collect as many users you can, get millions in funding from a VC and then sell the thing to Google. They look down on making actual tangible products that you sell to paying customers for profit.
The breakdown in marriages is not a cause, it's an effect. If you are broke, you are not going to get married. If you are lucky enough to be born into the virtual bubble part of the economy, you will still get married after college and take all those traditional steps in life.
The foremost Christian principle of morality is that life is more than the pursuit of the self. First is allegiance to God, commitment to family (yes, this requires personal restraint) church, community and country that establishes a very broad web of connection for the birth of children within this "village" of religious construction. This " village" connects the children to the past: grandparents, uncles and aunts; to the present: parents, brothers, sisters and cousins; and to the future: children, nieces and nephews.
The censorial disapproval of traditional American culture to children born out of wedlock relates to the Christian ideal, that foremost of all children's rights, is to have committed, responsible and loving parents --- this over the right of adults to remain as selfish, indulgent adolescents taking license.
Of course, the social revolution of the 60s changed this idea to the pursuit of self: self-fulfillment, self-actualization, self-discovery etc. This essentially represents a degree of personal abandonment of responsibility to the children. And the state is utterly incapable of instilling the operating software of civilization, which by definition consists entirely of religious ideals, because the only thing that science and nature can teach us is survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, for the advancement of the is the most successful gene pool of the physical animal.
So, who's going to start preaching that you sin against the order ordained by God and the future generation, by having children out of wedlock but selfishly refusing commitment and responsibility beyond the self?
You make a logical jump when you assert that lack of marriage denies men social stability. It's true that married men earn more than single men. However, it could just as easily be the stable income that makes marriage more likely than the other way around.
the last comment is generally correct by peterverkooijin and there is also the fact that so many people are going to college that the person with the slighty higher than average IQ is no longer available for the skilled blue collar job. I run a small company and have around 100 blue collar jobs and find it very difficult to find people qualified to fill them and virtually no one less than 45 years old
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