A few weeks ago, Richard Reeves was Ezra Klein’s guest in his NY Times podcast “The Men — and Boys — Are Not Alright.” Reeves is a writer and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he’s been studying inequality, poverty, social mobility, and family policy. His book, — Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It, published in September of 2022, — is based on his research on the growing gender gaps in education and employment.
“We’re used to thinking about gender inequality as a story of insufficient progress for women and girls,” wrote Klein in the podcast’s introduction. “There’s a good reason for that: Men have dominated human societies for centuries, and myriad inequalities — from the gender pay gap to the dearth of female politicians and chief executives — persist to this day.”
“But Reeves’ core argument is that there’s no way to fully understand inequality in America today without understanding the ways that men and boys — particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds — are falling behind. And they’re falling behind in ways that are tough on families, in ways that are tough on marriages, ways that are tough on children. And it gets much, much worse when you go down the income ladder.”
Early in their discussion, Reeves pointed out that for most of history, gender equality was intrinsically synonymous with the cause of women and girls. But, “the facts are there in a bunch of places where boys and men are really struggling now.” This relatively recent change is the reason why it’s taken us so long to gather the evidence, and “muster the courage to address this issue. Updating our view of the world as the evidence changes is very difficult.”
Reeves cited a few concrete examples. First, there’s a big gender gap in high school grade point average (GPA), — a very good predictor of important economic outcomes. The data show that two thirds of students with the top 10% of GPA are girls, while two thirds of the students with the bottom 10% of GPA are boys. In addition, girls are 6% more likely to graduate on time than boys.
A second data point is school performance in grades three through eight. Reeves cited a study led by Stanford sociologist Sean Reardon that found that “girls are at least 3/4 of a grade level ahead in English and dead even in math. And in the poorer school districts, they’re a grade level ahead in English and about a 1/3 of a grade level ahead in math.” These results may not be surprising because the evidence shows that boys develop later than girls.
The current gender gap in higher education is another major statistic. In 1972, Congress passed what’s become known as Title IX, a national law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal financial assistance. At the time Title IX was enacted, young men were 13 percentage points more likely to get a bachelor’s degree than women. Now, young women, are about 15 percentage points more likely to get a college degree than young men. “It’s pretty extraordinary how quickly things changed after Title IX,” noted Reeves.
These different educational trajectories have led to dramatically different labor market trajectories for men and women over the past 50 years. In particular, said Reeves, “for most men, things have been pretty tough.” As MIT professor David Autor has extensively documented, earnings and job opportunities for men in high-skill occupations have actually improved over the past several decades, while those for many men in mid- and low-skill occupations have been flat or declined. Wages and job opportunities for women have risen over the same period, although again, they’ve risen significantly faster for highly educated women. Reeves added that “there’s still a gender pay gap, largely as a result of the differences in the impact of parenting on men and women.”
“The amount of economic power that women now have in the labor market compared to 50 years ago is extraordinary.” In 1979, 13 percent of women earned more than a typical man, whereas now it’s about 40 percent. In addition, the rates of female employment are much higher now than 50 years ago, while male labor force participation has dropped significantly.
Men account for almost three quarter of so called deaths of despair, — the increase in suicide, drug overdoses, and alcoholism among middle-aged and older Americans, due to a sense that their social and economic prospects are bleak and they have nothing to live for. Men are about four times more likely to commit suicide than women, and they account for about 70% of opioid deaths.
Reeves referenced the gender gap research of economists David Autor and Melanie Wasserman, Autor’s former PhD student who’s now a UCLA professor. In their 2013 paper, “Wayward Sons: The Emerging Gender Gap in Labor Markets and Education,” they wrote: “Over the last three decades, the labor market trajectory of males in the U.S. has turned downward along four dimensions: skills acquisition; employment rates; occupational stature; and real wage levels. While the news for women is good, the news for men is poor.” Let me briefly summarize a few of their paper’s key conclusion.
Educational attainment. “Due to the rising importance of education over the last three decades as a determinant of lifetime income … the stagnation of male educational attainment bodes ill for the well-being of recent cohorts of U.S. males, particularly minorities and those from low- income households.”
Labor market opportunities. “Due to the sharply deteriorating earnings and employment prospects of less-educated U.S. workers, … less-educated males of recent cohorts are likely to face diminished employment and earnings opportunities and other attendant maladies, including poorer health, higher probability of incarceration, and generally lower life satisfaction.”
Social and economic impact. “Less-educated males are far less likely than highly-educated males to marry, but they are not less likely to have children. Due to their low marriage rates and low earnings capacity, children of less-educated males face comparatively low odds of living in economically secure households with two parents present. In general, children born into such households face poorer educational and earnings prospects over the long term.”
Generational implications. “Even more concerning is that male children born into low-income, single-parent headed households — which, in the vast majority of cases are female-headed households — appear to fare particularly poorly on numerous social and educational outcomes. A vicious cycle may ensue, with the poor economic prospects of less-educated males creating differentially large disadvantages for their sons, thus potentially reinforcing the development of the gender gap in the next generation.
Toward the end of the podcast, Klein and Reeves discussed a few potential solutions to the growing gender gap. One such solution is a proposal by Reeves on the need for men to expand the kinds of job they’ll prepare for and consider in the labor market.
Over the past few decades, a lot of money and effort has gone into getting more women into STEM jobs, that is, into the growing number of jobs involving science, technology, engineering and math. These efforts included middle school and high school campaigns to encourage girls to study STEM subjects, as well as recruitment drives to increase the number of female STEM teachers in middle schools, high schools and colleges. Reeves pointed out that we have increased the share of women in STEM jobs from around 8 percent in the 1970s to around 28 percent now.
But, while the labor market is generally becoming less gender segregated in STEM and in professions like law and medicine, it’s become more gender segregated in what Reeves calls HEAL jobs, — health, education, administration, and literacy. There are fewer and fewer men in those HEAL jobs, even though those jobs are growing and we need men in those jobs, noted Reeves. “We’re seeing an absolute plummeting in the male share in education, but also in areas like social work and psychology where we’ve basically halved the male share just in the last few decades. In social work and elementary and middle school, it’s gone from about 40 percent male in 1980 to about 27 percent male now.”
“In fact, as a share of the profession, there are twice as many women flying US military planes as there are men teaching kindergarten, said Reeves in conclusion. “And I’m going to go out on a limb here, Ezra, and say that I think it’s more important to have men teaching kindergarten than women flying fighter jets.”
Irving, thanks so much for posting this. At BRIEF (www.BRIEFNonprofit.org) we are seeing the underprivileged boys that we work with struggling. Hands-On learning is essential for boys especially those growing up in poverty. These boys often lack any male role models to aspire to be like.
Thanks,
Mac Devine, Executive Director of Blue Ridge Innovation and Entrepreneurship Foundation (BRIEF).
Former IBM Fellow
Posted by: Mac Devine | May 11, 2023 at 03:18 PM