Just saw this graph and it is making me say WOW
Case and Deaton are looking at the life expectancy of Americans at age 25 over time. They stratify on a single variable — does a person have at least a 4 year degree.
AND WOW!
Americans with at least a 4 year degree look pretty much like citizens of most rich nations. In 1990, these folks would be expected to live about 54 years longer and in 2019 (pre-COVID) the expected life span is about 59 more years, for a gain of 5 years. 2020 was a bit rough due to COVID with what looks to be visually bigger drops because the US got bored with social solidarity and public health by May 2020. But overall, in a 30 year time frame, Americans with college degrees have life expectancy trajectories that look a lot like the average (mostly non-degreed) international peer comparisons.
Folks without degrees in the US always lived less than folks with degrees. A 25 year old without a degree could expect to make it to ~76 in 1990. This slowly rose to about 78 in 2010 and then it flatlined and declined to 2019, with probably 6 to 12 months of less life expectancy. This cohort got wrecked by COVID in 2020, giving up 3 years of post-25 life expectancy.
I don’t know what to say or do about this beyond think deeply.
Alison Rose
I would imagine part of this is because our society has decided that requiring a BA for almost every office job is logical and fine. When I was looking for work before my last job, and when I’ve poked around pointlessly over the past year, almost every office job says “Bachelor’s degree required” — not preferred, required. Some of these are literally receptionist positions, and they want a four-year degree. What did they want you to major in, answering the phone? So someone with a couple decades of work experience would be less favored than a 22 year old who has maybe only ever worked retail but has a BA in history or something for a receptionist position at a real estate firm or whatever.
If you can’t get a decent job, you can’t get health insurance, you can’t afford a safe place to live, etc etc. We’ve basically made our society into a slow, boring Hunger Games.
wjca
Bad as the overall line is for “US without a BA”, what really leaps out is the plunge since 2018. Some Cause of Death data there might be really informative.
It might also be interesting to see what the data show for “without a BA (or equivalent)” in those other countries. Just so we’re comparing apples to apples.
Anoniminous
So two of the three groups of people without a BA are minimum wage earners meaning they live from paycheck to paycheck meaning they couldn’t afford to self-quarantine meaning they were most exposed to and were infected by Covid meaning they were the ones most likely to die from Covid.
Thus the continuing plunge vs. people with BAs
lee
@wjca: I’d bet 10 internet points a significant part of the drop for ‘without a BA’ would be the opioid crisis then the pandemic dog-piled on.
CaseyL
My automatic take is that people with BAs get better jobs that generally offer medical insurance coverage.
But, then there are the trades. I’d be interested in knowing if there are any crosstabs for people in the trades – and, within the trades, crosstabs for union v. non-union positions.
Because trades tend to be very well-paid jobs and, if union, also offer good healthcare coverage. OTOH, they also tend to be physically difficult and possibly dangerous, which might cancel out the advantages.
The data might also speak to people with BAs being better educated in general, and therefore better advocates for their own medical care: they have a better idea of what questions to ask, how to navigate the jungle that healthcare is in this country.and are more likely to be in areas that simply have better health generally (more doctors, more and better hospitals, more willing to do preventive care such as getting vaccinated).
Speaking of which, another crosstab I’d like to see is how many of the non-BAs live in areas where anti-vaxx ideology is strongest. We know that GOP voters tend to be non college-educated. The difference in Covid-related mortality between GOP states and Democratic states has already been noted in a few places. The GOP war against medicine, along with its war against education, is bound to have escalating effects on their populations’ M&M rates.
Central Planning
I think Alison Rose is right; all the things she mentioned really boil down to money.
I wonder if the 4-year degree correlation works in couples where one has a 4-year degree and one doesn’t. Does the non-degree person get the benefits of their partner having a degree?
And are you saying that there’s a correlation or a causation? Everyone knows that the decline of pirates has increased global temperatures, right?
ETA: Does the data hold true if you look at Anoniminous’ comment and break it down by disadvantaged groups? Also, I was going to add in trades to my comment, but CaseyL did a good job covering what I would have said.
One more ETA: Firefox is borking the visual editor again.
MisterForkbeard
Clearly the answer is to give everyone a mail-order degree, which should fix the problem.
But really, I suspect that it’s two very related things:
1. Income disparity between those with degrees and those without
2. That the type of people who would get degrees have the background to get better jobs, are more educated about risks, and so on
Laertes
This is almost certainly just quibbling or misreading, but:
I imagine when they say “with a BA” they mean “with any four-year degree,” right? I mean, this chart isn’t, say, grouping BS holders with the no-college group?
Or is there some fascinating disconnect between the outcomes for BA and BS holders?
David Anderson
@wjca: Several of my colleagues have aggressively mined the CDC WONDER database for mortality data for their research. CDC WONDER has cause of death…. and mortality spikes pre-COVID are a lot of guns and opioids.
Case and Deaton have a long line of research on what they call “deaths of despair” which adds in alcohol related deaths to … I would imagine that if they had the time/slides they would go into great detail on the composition of mortality rate changes.
JoyceH
@lee: Granted that the opioid crisis has taken a toll, but I think that issue has been running (though with less attention) for longer than just the past few years. I was really struck by that steep decline in both categories that started before the pandemic. I wonder how it would track along states based on Medicaid expansion. Of course my first thought was that the decline starts right about the beginning of the Trump administration – but I don’t think even that clown car started effecting mortality immediately.
narya
I’m gonna put my brother up as Exhibit A. No 4-year degree–he’s an auto mechanic. He’s very smart and very good at what he does, and he has worked for dealerships (same ownership group, actually) for 20+ years; they continue to throw money at him, because there are so few people who can both do the mechanical work and the now-computerized work. His health insurance is stupid expensive, but he has it. At my mom’s urging, he started wearing gloves at work, at least sometimes, which has insulated him a bit from the various chemicals to which he’s exposed, he works out, and he quit smoking decades ago. His wife has a 4-year degree. And, in that mini-biography, you can see multiple factors that likely differentiate him from the vast majority of folks in that trend line above.
Frankly, access to health care alone likely explains a ton of that gap–that would be where I’d start.
smith
@lee: The epidemic of “deaths of despair” (which includes opioid deaths, along with those due to alcoholism and suicide) had been increasing during the years prior to the pandemic and was known to especially affect people without a college education. As noted earlier, people without college degrees were then exposed to more covid infections because of their job and living situations, and also were put at risk because of lack of access to health care. It seems to me that these differential death rates are overdetermined, and not in any way surprising.
Yarrow
@David Anderson:
Gosh, that’s a telling description of the category. How sad.
Roger Moore
@Laertes:
This always annoys me, too, if only because I have a BS rather than a BA. I think they’re using “BA” as shorthand for “4 year degree or higher”. It says something about the field that people naturally assume a BA rather than a BS when they’re talking about 4 year degrees.
JoyceH
@David Anderson: Geez, how could I forget guns? Yeah, that’s bound to be a factor.
Caroline
Angus Deaton is the father of someone I went to high school with! They won the Nobel a few years ago. His daughter was (is) also super smart…
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
I think you’re misreading the chart. The first big drop is between 2019 and 2020, which might or might not include the pandemic depending on when in those years you’re taking as the baseline. I think they use end of year, so the 2020 number includes 9 or 10 months of pandemic.
JaySinWA
@Anoniminous: The Census Bureau measured change in percentage of people with 4 year degrees over a relatively short period of time would introduce some dataset issues to address in the lifespan analysis, I would think.
Rusty
I am wondering if there is a significant difference also between men and women in the with BA and without BA groups (above and beyond the overall spread of women having higher life expectancies). Only anecdotally, from my high school class from the mid 80’s, without BA males have the highest rate of mortality. So what I am wondering is if the spread between men and women without BA’s is larger than the spread between men and women with BA’s. In addition, more women are entering college and completing college. That alone would tend to show having a BA leads to a greater life expectancy (my assumption is the data analysis accounts for this.) The greater academic achievement of women is a relatively more recent phenomena so I am not sure if it has had time to show effects. Finally, there has been good discussion above on things like access to healthcare (and I would add other wealth based health effects, such as relative wealth allows for safer cars, living in safer neighborhoods, living in neighborhoods with less pollution, etc.), but I also think it would be worth considering cultural differences. There are cultural differences between with BA and without BA segments of society. Rates of smoking, rates of gun ownership, opinions on exercise and diet, etc. I suspect cultural differences matter.
Brachiator
An amazing chart. That the gap has existed since 1990 should call for deeper analysis. I wonder what earlier years were like.
I would also like to be able to compare non college degree holders in other countries with the US. I wonder whether it is easy to get a breakdown of Canada or the UK.
Lobo
I would argue there might be two Americas, one good thing John Edwards injected into the political conversation. There is a first world America and a 2nd or 3rd world America. One the dinner party set of the 1st world America pretends doesn’t exist or deserving of help.
Mike Furlan
@Alison Rose: “Bachelor’s degree required”
Of course a Bachelor’s degree is required. They don’t want their employees dropping dead on the job.
Mike Furlan
Well, DeLong helped, by shilling for NAFTA. NAFTA was just a small part of the enshitification of the life of those without a BA, but it certainly didn’t help.
He should put a “Mission Accomplished” banner on the post.
scav
@Brachiator: There are certainly studies. (UN DESA Policy Brief No. 145: On the importance of monitoring inequality in life expectancy)
But damned if I can find the interactive charts that showed the breakout variance by country. Those were fun.
laura
That’s a snapshot of hard living. Dangerous jobs, no emergency funds, inadequate healthcare, food deserts, low expectations, hard to little luck, and a society that cares less and less about their fellow citizens. Also, too fucking many billionaires who simply will not pay their fair share in taxes.
eversor
I wouldn’t point just at COVID. It’s something much worse.
I don’t have a degree though I have people who work for me with masters. So I know both cohorts. If you break it up by sex you see the bigger picture. Men with no degree are out of the dating market and largely screwed financially. Even in a rich area like mine alcoholism and other items are rampant. They have basically given up on life completely.
There’s a term for this of sliding into the skid. You’re fucked. While the system is rigged for men it’s rigged the other way now to a much lesser extent. You’re off the dating market for the majority of women you’d want to date won’t because you lack a degree and make less than them. Nobody is going to fix this. One group hates working people and the other thinks that you falling behind is a good thing. So give up! Check out! Lean into it! Fuck the system and fuck it all. Play games, drink, don’t bother with health and the ones who die the fastest are the lucky ones as they don’t have to live through all this. If you die at 40 that’s 30 less years in hell so it’s not a bad thing. You’re just biding time till your ass checks out. If you’re going to participate in society it’s to watch the anguish of those above you. Nothing else matters. In fact nothing matters. And the funniest thing is people who think that things do matter. They aren’t in the joke. Not yet. But when it comes for them it’s going to be fucking funny so bring on AI and take even the top 10% down into the gutter with you. That’s going to be funny.
Now you can object to all that. You can also say it’s not completely accurate. I’d agree. But there is a huge swath of males who live like that daily. And you can’t reach them. Shit if I was in their position I’d be one of them. But I make enough and am well above average looking so it’s not bad for me. If either of those were not true I’d be right there with them laughing it all up.
We have a massive problem in that we have a few generations of young men that are screwed. And they are either giving up and slowly killing themselves or they are actively killing others. It’s not going away. And the right preys on them with a “hey, you are screwed, let’s screw them as well” sell while the left says “yes and you deserve it, things are better than ever”. One sales pitch works. The other is laughable and makes them more made and suicidal.
I don’t expect this to change.
Michael Bersin
I’d like to see the crosstabs on “graduates from accredited institutions” versus “graduates of Trump University”.
Kent
Obesity is a big factor as well. And all the obesity-related diseases like diabetes.
I teach HS and have taught at perhaps 10 different schools in the past decade in various capacities. There is a very close correlation between the wealth of a school and obesity. Rich schools have generally think student bodies, poor schools have lots and lots of obese kids. You can go anywhere in the country and look at a picture of the student body of a HS and make a fairly accurate guess as to the level of wealth in that community based on how many kids are obese.
In this country, poverty and education level go hand in hand. The poorer you are the more likely you are to be overweight. It is the exact opposite of the 19th century where the rich were the “fat cats”.
eversor
@Kent:
Wealth being tied to education is a feature of meritocracy. So is life expectancy and mental health. If there is not a big gap then we are not a meritocratic society. This can’t be dodged. People see it. So if you aren’t in it, check out and get that six pack, fuck the posh.
Kent
I don’t think that is entirely true. It is the self-sabotage of sliding into MAGA that makes them unmarketable. My brother doesn’t have a college degree but he is kind of a leftist who does art stuff and he has a rich social life. He has kind of a working class hipster vibe that seems to work for him. But if he flipped and went full MAGA Trumper they’d all drop him like he was cancer.
Kent
Yes, that’s all obviously true. I’m just pointing to obesity as one of those social markers in this country that seems to get little discussion. But it very much correlates with class and wealth. And probably contributes to some extent to the plunge in life expectancy for the less educated.
RevRick
Buried in these statistics is the hidden costs of white supremacy. Democrats do better with people achieving bachelor degrees, and also women and minorities. Those latter groups are over represented in less educated and poorer segments of society, yet women and Hispanics do better than white men without a college degree.
We can readily understand how white supremacy plays havoc with the health and lives of black Americans, but it also wreaks havoc on white men.
Why?
First, white supremacy afflicts white men with an inflated, unrealistic sense of entitlement and superiority. When those warped beliefs get clobbered by reality, they are more likely to feel constantly enraged… and the stressors of cortisol coursing through their veins diminishes health.
Second, white supremacy leads them to vote for politicians who are opposed to any policies that might benefit women and minorities.
Third, white supremacy, being basically fascist, peddles a hero cult of the rugged individual. We have seen this manifested in the adamant resistance to the simple act of wearing a mask during COVID.
raven
@laura: If I hadn’t broken my back in a car wreck in 75 I probably would have never finished my bachelors . . .masters. . . or doctorate but I did have my GED!
raven
I just learned that I was eligible for a small, retroactive to 2014 pension from a job I had 40 years ago. I always thought it took ten years to get vested but I juts called HR and they said “it was five up until 1995”!
Roger Moore
@eversor:
Wealth being tied to education is something you’d expect in a meritocracy, but that’s not the only way it can happen. You can also get that way when education is so expensive only the wealthy can afford a degree. That’s what Ivy League legacy preferences are about: making sure the wealthy continue to have access to the top schools even when they aren’t the smartest, best performing students.
JaySinWA
@Rusty: More women than men getting 4 year degrees recently is another demographic shift that any lifespan analysis will have to figure in. There are a lot of moving parts in the 4 year or more degree group.
trollhattan
Oof, hard to square that with the conservative jihad against “educated elites” and whether college, beyond STEM naturally, is a pathetic, anti-American waste of time.
Wonder what percentage of the January 6 invaders are degreed? Bet the number is pretty high, since they had to have the bank and free time for travel to and get accommodations in D.C. (not cheap!). Like those Texans who posed in front of their chartered turboprop before departing to the treasoning.
smith
@trollhattan: I was curious as to whether MAGA types are more or less educated than average, and found one study that said about 30% have college degrees, a little more than the percentage of the white non-Hispanic population as a whole. Not J6 specifically, but the same general group.
jonas
@Kent: No wonder. In affluent neighborhoods, kids have yards to play in, backyard pools, well-lit streets with sidewalks where they can skateboard or bike, parks and green spaces where they can run and hang out. And they’re served by supermarkets and farmer’s markets selling healthy-fresh, food. Poor kids usually don’t have any of that, live in small apartments, can’t run around outside because the neighborhood’s too dangerous, and often live in food deserts where the only place to grab a bite to eat is the corner bodega.
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
Superficially, makes me feel a bit better, or at least amused, about a BA in Physics. :-)
On a deeper level, I absolutely agree about the obnoxiousness of the terminology. (Not all economists… :-)
Anyway, they are completely consistent about it in their working paper, though they do appear to say (but maybe not!) that they mean a four-year college degree.
ACCOUNTING FOR THE WIDENING MORTALITY GAP BETWEEN ADULT AMERICANS WITH AND WITHOUT A BA (PDF, Anne Case, Angus Deaton, May 2023)
RSA
Here’s a link to the paper, for anyone who has questions. For what it’s worth, they write,
So they might not be looking at some the questions that have been raised here. For example, I was also thinking of wealth differences as being a causal factor, but a quick browse leads me to think they treat wealth differences as an effect of the college divide rather than an intermediate factor. (I could be wrong in my reading.)
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
When I owned my first business, in the last century, in a high end trade with pretty good per hourly pay, and a shortage of qualified employees, no one needed a union because we had them as part of the wage setting process, the competition for employees. Some would move for a small wage increase and some would stay to find out that we gave raises to be competitive, which one had to do because of that shortage of qualified applicants. Employers did not set the wage scale, employees did.
Tom Levenson
@raven: Mazel tov!
Less consequential but still sweet–I learned that an employer made a contribution to a union pension fund on my behalf and even though I didn’t vest, an obscure rule means I have a few bucks more in pension savings that I can roll out of that union fund and into my SEP-IRA. Not enough to move up my retirement date, but better in my hands than the ether, amirite?
eversor
@Kent:
I did mention I don’t entirely agree with it either but that I know both sides of that.
I know plenty of liberal guys around me in this area who are not datable. They don’t have a degree so they are going to get turned down by women as most of them have one. They make less than the women so they are off the market there as well. Pro choice, pro gay marriage, on all the social issues they check the boxes. But they don’t have a degree and they don’t hit the magical six figure mark for this area so they aren’t relationship material. Most of them are good looking enough that sleeping around wasn’t a problem in their early 20s but now that’s not possible.
So they give up. They aren’t incels they just want nothing to do with society as a whole. They aren’t gun owners either. But they are screwed. They know this. So they aren’t going to vote anymore, they aren’t going to bother with women at all. So they check out. They hang out with themselves and play more games than ever and drink like crazy and with legal weed that’s a big thing now as well.
They aren’t hostile to anyone or violent they just gave up. And they aren’t wrong to have done it. They are screwed. Nothing and nobody is going to help them so supporting anything or anyone is just degrading yourself and pretending reality isn’t what it is. None of them expect a relationship or retirement they don’t care about that anymore either. It’s not in the cards for them. They embrace that.
There are now three generations of men like this. It works for me as I’m good looking enough with a high enough income that women swipe the way I need them to on social media apps so I clean up. By the time they realize that I don’t have a degree despite managing people who went to the fancy schools I know to bail and move on. But I get why some of my peers don’t participate. If I didn’t look the way I did, have the resume I do, and couldn’t fake it I wouldn’t either. I’d be right there not voting on the couch with them hitting the bong with cheap vodka seltzers laughing at it all and hoping it burned down as well. Cause it is well and truly fucked.
Thankfully I have six pack abs and a six figure income at a fancy firm. So I don’t have issues. And at the end of the day, that’s all that counts here.
Professor Bigfoot
I would love to see this broken out by race.
It seems since the Obama administration that straight white Christian men without four year degrees have been on a self destructive path.
Like maybe their whiteness is no longer the guarantee of a good life above “those people” anymore.
Like maybe they no longer have the power to ensure that “the Black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”
Viewed in the context of LBJ’s dictum “give him someone to look down on and he’ll empty his pockets for you,” of course.
Now they’re in a society where women don’t HAVE to be married to survive and to even thrive.
So OF COURSE they’re “checking out.”
White supremacy is deadly to *everyone.
Suzanne
@Rusty:
I have the same question.
It’s well-documented that there is a significant gap in “healthcare behaviors” between men and women. Women will go to the doctor more regularly, get more frequent medical screenings, eat vegetables, stretch, etc…..more than men.
scav
Another day, another Court case not going Trump’s way. Only in FTFNYT right now I think.
Roger Moore
@JaySinWA:
I expect Case and Deaton know enough to figure that kind of thing in. If you’re worried about demographic shifts throwing your calculations off, you can correct for it by breaking down your groups into demographic subgroups and then recalculating the values using a consistent demographic weighting. That’s just off the top of my head; I’m sure people who have been in the field for decades and have won every award out there studying it have more sophisticated tools available.
trollhattan
@smith: The 30% would not surprise me, and equally the leaders and figureheads are likely all wealthy connected folks with a dedicated, stirred up group of marks. How does one explain, for example, Sen. John Kennedy’s public persona and Oxford education? Tom Cotton and Harvard?
Kelly
My view into the blue collar world is through my brother. He retired from a life in construction a few years ago. He’s healthy and strong. Never supervised but always been a leader. Captain of the football and wrestling teams way back in high school. Always has a story of the bad health habits and risk taking of the guys he worked with. Risk taking include recreational bar fights. When the boys got going he’d pick up a pool cue and get his back to the wall. Whenever anyone came at him he’d lift the cue and say “Not with me”. Has some interesting scars on his face from turning over a piece of equipment the first year or two while learning his trade. These may have helped folks take him seriously. Never had to deck anybody.
trollhattan
Rep Jasmine Crockett (D TX) everybody!
https://nitter.net/Acyn/status/1707464799209070665#m
eversor
Watching Biden speach is fun. He doesn’t having the soaring oratory of Obama or the charisma of Clinton but he’s damn good at this. Arguably better than Obama and Clinton. He’s also playing into his age and turning it into a strength.
Tony G
I’m going to guess that the primary reason for this horror show is that other “rich countries” treat “blue collar” and “pink collar” workers with some degree of respect and provide them with some of those evil “government benefits” — including, notably, universal medical care — and the United States is an outlier in adamantly refusing to do this. It’s that horrible Calvinist mentality that burdens everyone, not only the Evangelical nuts. Throw in the widespread availability of very powerful guns, plus persistent racism, and here we are. USA! USA! USA! (I’m not even going to mention the widespread availability of deadly drugs, because those drugs are available worldwide. What’s special about the U.S. is the fact that so many people apparently view an early death from fentanyl as being preferable to their miserable lives.)
Tony G
@eversor: The problem with Joe Biden is that he is, simultaneously, both a senile old man and a brilliant Communist mastermind. He needs to be impeached — as soon as the House Clown Caucus can figure out a reason to impeach him.
Bupalos
I’m guessing folks will jump to a “jobs”/income explanation for this and that’s certainly a major part of the answer.
What is interesting of late is that a BA is trending to confer less economic advantage than it used to. But the gap widens. Dramatically. Which opens the possibility that this isn’t primarily about money.
Bill Arnold
@Professor Bigfoot:
See this by the same authors:
Life expectancy in adulthood is falling for those without a BA degree, but as educational gaps have widened, racial gaps have narrowed (Anne Case, Angus Deaton, March 8, 2021)
eversor
@Kelly:
Scars work in your favor. As someone with an obviously once busted lip, scar above an eye socket, and broken nose I get less crap than others would. Being the magical six feet tall and also in shape helps as well. Combine them all and you don’t come off as an easy target. You’re too big, and you’ve obviously been in a few scraps.
Bullies go for the easy targets. If you’re a hard target you can often break up a fiasco simply by approaching it and threatening to get involved.
It’s funny because I’m mostly a teddy bear. I just boxed, did judo, played rugby, and was in the Navy. But they don’t need to know that. It’s sort of fun when you can chase people off without having to make the effort.
wjca
Christine Emba, at the Washington Post, gives a look at the dating scene from the other side:
Single moms know marriage would be ideal, but how do they get one?
It doesn’t sound like a degree, or a huge pay check, or even a pretty face, is what is lacking. From their perspective. Whatever the guys who have given up may tell themselves.
Suzanne
@Bupalos:
I think the “healthcare behaviors” aspect matters here. Lots of those healthcare behaviors don’t cost anything. Hell, many of them save money, like not drinking or cutting back on alcohol or tobacco.
eversor
@Tony G:
On the mastermind part there might be something to it. In combat sports there’s a common tactic where if you can force your opponent to keep missing they are just going to get more desperate and flail about more. This of course opens the opportunity for counters and other things that you wouldn’t normally be able to use.
The GOP is probably too stupid to realize their punches aren’t landing and they are setting themselves up for the uppercut.
Suzanne
@wjca: Rebecca Traister had a good piece on this topic this week in The Cut.
Bill Arnold
@wjca:
From that WaPo opinion piece (thanks for the link):
They are assortative mating themselves into singlehood.
Don’t be a mangrove snail or a Japanese common toad: “Evidence for size-related assortative mating has also been found in the mangrove snail, Littoraria ardouiniana and in the Japanese common toad, Bufo japonicus.”
eversor
@Suzanne:
Those healthcare behaviors are a result of giving the fuck up. I haven’t given up because I’m good looking enough people swipe on me to get a date and I make enough to have fun. By the time we get to the “but you don’t have a degree, how do you do what you do” I’m fine to move on. Were that not the case I’d give up as well.
Good looking high income or GTFO, and if you don’t have a degree than GTFO is the mantra around here. People will assume the third if you have the first two and that’s the trick to it. If you don’t then just drop dead.
Most guys in that situation get this. So checking out is the most sane thing they can do. I honestly respect them more for it than the few who idiotically participate in the system as it exists. At least there’s a shred of honestly and control over your own situation rather than participating in your own destruction.
Things are bleak for a lot of people.
Bill Arnold
Interesting: I just used “strengthen the narrative” in a video teleconference with a high-powered tech startup, and it was understood.
Roger Moore
@Bupalos:
It’s only an intermediate part of the answer, though. Yes, income is important, but the job market is a miserable failure at measuring people’s actual economic output. The job market says what people are willing to pay you, but that has a lot more to do with custom and societal preferences as it does about how much value you’re adding to society. That’s why shareholders and C-suite executives have done so well for the past 40 years: society has said owners and executives deserve everything they can take.
Suzanne
@eversor:
Um no. Healthcare behaviors, like “going to the doctor when you are sick” and “getting some exercise” and “eating an un-fried vegetable on occasion” and “not doing dumb shit” are the exact opposite of “giving the fuck up”.
I will also note that this healthcare-behavior gap between men and women exists even among people of similarly low income. So….patriarchy?
Suzanne
@Bill Arnold:
That’s okay with many women. Including me. Rather be single than with a man not capable of being an equal partner.
Professor Bigfoot
@Bill Arnold: Pretty much what I figure– whiteness provides less of an advantage and for a lot of these guys, *whiteness is ALL they really have.
narya
I think the issue is, in part, some of those no-college-degree guys don’t want to date a woman who has a degree and a good job–because then she might want some actual power in the relationship. She’s gonna have all these fancy ideas about sharing the housework and stuff . . .
I personally know several men who are married to women who have more education than the men have, and part of what makes it work is that they regard their spouses as actual partners–they prefer it that way!–but a lot of men still expect to be In Charge in some vague way. I’m not without a certain amount of sympathy–dating is hard, no matter what–but it’s not impossible to bridge that educational divide
ETA: or what Suzanne said
ETA2: also, plenty of men who have the education also have those regressive attitudes.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: White supremacy plays a huge part of this. When Hispanics and women, who earn less than their white male counterparts, nevertheless outlive them, the correlation between income and mortality is not absolute. As I pointed out in my post, that factor has got to be white male supremacy.
What else could explain it?
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: This is what terrifies conservatives: they long for the days of OUR grandparents, when a woman couldn’t have credit on her own, couldn’t own her own home, had to defer to a man for her decisions, locked out of the higher-income job market for simply being female, and thus *ripe* to be “groomed” by “alpha males.”
scav
@Bill Arnold: It’s certainly a case of Heavens Forfend! men upping their game and becoming individuals sane accomplished women would find worthy of trust. Uppity broads.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: The terrifying fear of having to “report to” a person of color or a woman; the panic caused by having someone who he believes is his inferior to be “over” him.
God over Man, Man over Woman, White over Black, Christian over Jew or Muslim or Hindu or whatever is *core* to this.
smith
@scav: Yep. I think the main thing a lot of these guys lack is not a degree, but relationship skills.
Professor Bigfoot
@scav: This is the thing– God forbid these me do ANYTHING to make themselves more attractive to women.
No, they’re totally “Me Man, you woman, you do what I say,” and in this Year of Our Lord 2023, women ain’t gotta put up with that bullshit.
eversor
@Bill Arnold:
That and the men that don’t make the cut are opting completely out of society. Those who do make the cut quickly realize they can sleep around at will as they are the catch and do not have to settle down ever.
So you have a legion of guys now who want nothing to do with women at all. And a select group who use and toss them away like a condom and laugh over it.
The alt-right is horrible and evil. They aren’t wrong in their realization of this situation and that it’s growing. Nor are the wrong that “give up women completely, stick to yourself, work out, hang about with the guys, and just move on” is a rational solution. It works.
Millenials are already pretty bad with this. Gen Z is worse. The next generation is going to be all sorts of bad.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
Oh, preach. Again: the right wing seeks to drive women out of public life back into the physical, sexual, financial, and cultural control of men.
The fact that dudes are living shorter lives may indicate that patriarchy is bad for them!
Suzanne
@eversor: Plenty of men are getting married. It’s just that, increasingly, the men who are getting married went to college, and the women and men they’re marrying also went to college.
So what is it about college that promotes family formation? Marriage has long been known as good for men. Increased life expectancy, higher rate of happiness, etc.
Roger Moore
@wjca:
Yeah, a lot of the men who have given up are expecting to be able to start 1950s-style nuclear families, maybe with the exception that their wives would be allowed to work outside the home. Those expectations are so baked into their worldview they don’t even realize how much they’re restricting their options.
Ruckus
@Lobo:
Well they made it on their own, why shouldn’t everyone else?
BTW if it isn’t obvious that is a tortured way of saying that there are those with shorter trips to the better side, like minimal baby steps, and those with a very tortured trip to get to there. However not every state treats everyone with such wide disparity. CA has a good path to good schools for anyone that wants to go. Yes you have to work some for it, but the work is very much worth it.
Of course they left out that their parents graduated from a good/high end college and had that same advantage. My sisters went to very good schools and one taught at USC part time and neither of our parents went to college. Different time of course, when not as large a percentage of parents went. Although 2 of my uncles by marriage and not much younger than my parents went to pretty good colleges and had engineering degrees.
eversor
@smith:
Not true at all. I spent my first ex military years as a nice guy working at non profits and a do gooder. Dating wasn’t going to happen. They all dated high paid consultants or lawyers.
Then I became a high paid consultant. Got ripped and fit again. Ignored women completely and just went out to spend more with the guys. Cue panties droppinig and a new girl each month until they realized I didn’t have a degree. At which point on to the next.
Till I settled down (and I don’t really have to as I’m one of the few good enough so she’s on the hook more than me) for years it was a play ground. Dozens of women for each couple guys that could pass the looks and income test, they figure out the education later, if you can toss enough cash on the first few dates they don’t know. By that time who cares.
So no. The Andrew Tate approach does work completely. Money, looks, education, and be a fucking jerk. The nice guy with a stable job does not work.
Don’t get me wrong I do all the housework. I pay all the bills. I clean the cats shit and care for it. I’m the domestic servant not her. But the reality is I can go out and find a dozen women in a moment to replace her and she’s not at her age going to land a guy that can replace me.
My male friends that make less than me and don’t have the jaw line or looks incels scream about dwon’t make the cut so they aren’t going to get a relationship. So they are right not to try.
Guys now either have five chicks with a main and a few on the side or they don’t get laid.
Like it or not, income, educational, and political associative mating is creating a small amount of huge winners and large amount of users. It’s not going away either.
The situation is bad.
wjca
Yet I see a guy like my neighbor. No education past high school. Works as a farrier. (Yes, really!) Not bad looking, but hardly movie star looks.
It’s an upscale area near Silicon Valley, so no shortage of high income guys here. Still, he’s happily married with a couple of kids. (IIRC, his wife does have a college degree.) So count me skeptical of the “jobs”/income explanation.
eversor
@Suzanne:
I live in a permanent state of being engaged. Because as a man that looks good enough and makes enough I don’t need wife. On the other hand she at 47 with a masters does not have many options on the market that match the eductation, income, and looks that she’d demand of a mate. So at the end of the day, I could go sleep around with 20 year olds all over the place and she can’t do the same. Can’t find enough that live up to what she wants. Those that can are going to go for an 8/9/10 for looks and grab a few.
Like it or not associative dating is a thing. It’s largely driven by women. The result has been men checking out or taking massive advantage of it. Thus we get Andrew Tate. Who while horrible, isn’t wrong in his advice for how to work it. We are now staring down three generations of young men who have learned this lesson good and hard and are primed for violence. The GOP did not create this. We all did.
Keep telling yourself it’s about personality. It’s not. If you want a date be an ass. If you want to be a virgin be nice.
Suzanne
@eversor: Associative mating is absolutely a thing. There was just a piece in the FTFNYT (I think) about women in South Korea. They also have had a significant increase in the percentage of women with advanced education and career potential, and a lot of the men in the country want tradwives. Women are responding by staying single, dating other women, with some amount of hooking up. I see no reason that women in the US will respond similarly.
ETA: I have no doubt that many women who can’t find men who meet their standards for marriage will continue to hook up as they see fit.
Brachiator
The Angus Deaton paper is available as a download here at the Brookings site.
Interesting read.
dnfree
@eversor:
“They all dated high paid consultants or lawyers.” ALL of them? This is like your generalizations about Christians. Women are sexually available to men who have degrees in specific fields, and even men like yourself who have good incomes are not desirable. No exceptions.
WOW. It may be that your attitude about women comes through more than you realize.
Tony G
@eversor: That’s true. Although it doesn’t take a mastermind to outwit these idiots.
Tony G
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m both white and a man but, Jesus, there are a lot of really stupid white men rummaging around in this country. Obviously, people of any race or gender can be stupid, but the special thing about (some, not all) white men is that they have this fairy-tale notion of “the way things used to be” (usually in an era long before they were born) when white men ruled the place — and they feel cheated by the fact that things have changed in the past 60 years. So, they whine, they shoot fentanyl, and they support grifters like Donald Trump. The more white men lose power the better off we’ll all be.
LiminalOwl
@Mike Furlan: With all due respect, I doubt that aspect has enteredinto their calculations. “BA required” for jobs like the ones Alson Rose mentions is a culling tool: limit the applicant pool. And I’m guessing (just a hunch) limiting it as much as possible to White women.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes! The payoff of white male supremacy is the unearned psychic benefit of feeling superior. The cost is when the world refuses to orient and cater to this belief, leading to a constant state of frustration and resentment, with the concomitant stress.
wjca
Saw something similar (for entry level jobs only) half a century ago. Fortunately not beyond that, as a couple of the top guys in our group barely finished high school. But they learned the computer business in the Army, and so came in above that entry level.