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Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings (1993)

Chapter: 2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT

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Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
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2
Earnings and Employment

We begin our analysis of the settings in which adolescents are growing up with a discussion of the economic position of prime-age young adults (aged 25-34) and a review of the changes affecting this group over the last two decades. Although many factors form the settings in which adolescents live, and these are discussed in subsequent chapters, family income is the key influence on all settings. Therefore, to understand why increasing numbers of children and adolescents are spending their formative years in high-risk settings, it is first necessary to understand the economic position of their parents. This chapter reviews the current economic position of prime-age young adults—the parents of 52.1 percent of children under the age of 18. The earnings of this population are the primary source of economic support for the majority of children in the United States (Centers for Disease Control, 1991).

TRENDS SINCE 1970

American family incomes increased almost continuously from 1949 through 1973 but have slowed dramatically in the last two decades. The 1973-1982 period marked the first sustained decline in real earnings for many workers since the Great Depression, and the recovery since then has not significantly improved the incomes of families with children. The income gains from the economic expansion of the 1980s produced increases in real per capita

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

income. However, the gains were highly concentrated in the upper income brackets, and both earnings and per capita income became more unequal over the decade. The increases brought little real gain to the great majority of young adults with children (John et al., 1989; Danzinger and Weinberg, 1992).1

Since the later 1970s, structural changes in the U.S. economy, coupled with demographic changes that have increased the number of female-headed households, have caused a substantial and broad-based deterioration in the economic position of this age group. The decline in income cuts across race, gender, and educational attainment, but it is especially pronounced among the less educated—those with a high school diploma or less—and is almost as significant for high school graduates who do not obtain a 4-year college degree.

As shown in Table 2-1, the average real earnings for young adults declined significantly from 1979 to 1988, and this decline occurred during a period of strong economic expansion. Those who worked year-round on a full-time basis experienced a 5.2 percent decline in real earnings in the 1980s. The least educated workers suffered most: white males without a high school diploma saw a drop of 18.8 percent in real earnings; white females without a high school diploma, 14 percent. College graduates, especially women, enjoyed a slight increase in earnings, but high school graduates generally experienced sharp declines.

Table 2-2 illustrates changes in labor market participation during the 1980s for the various demographic groups, by level of education. (Labor market participation rates measure the proportion of persons working or looking for work in a specified population.) The unchanged employment-to-population rates for white men gives a somewhat misleading picture of the economic opportunities available to the less educated. The employment rates of dropouts and high school graduates had fallen sharply in the 1970s (Blackburn et al., 1990), and the rough stability of the 1980s simply reflects the earlier timing of that loss of employment. For young black males, however, employment rates dropped sharply during the 1980s, especially among high school dropouts.

1  

The real impact of stagnant or declining incomes among families with children is difficult to gauge because of problems in estimating the effects of declining family size over the last two decades. Smaller families mean that family income is shared among fewer children, and thus the impact of the declines may not be as severe as they appear.

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

TABLE 2-1 Average Earnings of Workers Aged 25-34, 1979 and 1988

 

Average Earnings (1988 dollars)

 

Demographic Group and Highest Educational Attainment

1979

1988

Changes in Earnings, 1979-1988 (percent)

All Workers

21,823

20,678

-5.2

White Males

Dropoutsa

19,848

16,108

-18.8

High school graduatesb

24,889

21,776

-12.5

College graduatesc

29,288

29,780

+1.7

Black Males

Dropouts

14,596

14,594

0

High school graduates

19,449

16,638

-14.5

College graduates

26,830

24,348

-9.3

White Females

Dropouts

12,623

10,852

-14.0

High school graduates

15,403

15,348

0

College graduates

20,987

23,791

+13.4

Black Females

Dropouts

11,749

11,169

-4.9

High school graduates

14,596

13,285

-9.0

College graduates

19,349

19,567

+1.1

NOTES: Whites include both the white and the ''other" racial group.

a Completed schooling of less than 12 years.

b Schooling of 12 to 15 years.

c Schooling of 16 years or more.

SOURCE: These statistics were calculated using the March 1980 and 1989 Current Population Surveys. Earnings are defined as wage and salary income; only full-time, year-round workers were included in the sample for this table. The average earnings statistics are geometric means, reported in 1988 dollars.

The combination of a decline in the value of real earnings and rising levels of unemployment has thrust a very high proportion of families headed by an adult aged 25-34 into poverty. In 1991, 23.1 percent of all such families had incomes below the poverty level. For whites, the percentage living in poverty was 18.6; for blacks, 46.0; and for Hispanics, 38.0.

What explains the trends in employment opportunities and earnings

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

TABLE 2-2 Labor Market Participation by Race, Gender, and Education for Adults Aged 25-34, 1980 and 1989

 

Employment-to-Population Ratio

Demographic Group

Dropoutsa

High School Graduatesb

College Graduatesc

White males

1980

.80

.90

.94

1989

.80

.90

.94

Change, 1980-1989

0

0

0

Black males

1980

.68

.80

.90

1989

.56

.75

.90

Change, 1980-1989

-.12

-.05

0

White females

1980

.43

.59

.75

1989

.44

.67

.82

Change, 1980-1989

.01

.08

.07

Black females

1980

.41

.64

.84

1989

.29

.64

.88

Change, 1980-1989

-.12

0

.04

a Completed schooling of less than 12 years.

b Schooling of 12 to 15 years.

c Schooling of 16 years or more.

SOURCE: The statistics were calculated using data from the March 1980 and March 1989 Current Population Surveys.

potential for young adults generally, and for less educated youths specifically? We discuss a number of economywide trends and institutional forces affecting young adult males. The analysis centers on young men because the majority of relevant studies do not include young women. Several economywide developments appear to have lowered demand for less educated young male workers.

JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG WORKERS

Sectoral Shifts in Employment

In recent decades, the number of blue-collar and skilled jobs has decreased and there has been a relative decline in the importance

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

of the manufacturing sector. The total number of manufacturing jobs has remained relatively stable, which means that few opportunities are available for young workers entering the labor force. As a result, since 1970, the fraction of males employed in manufacturing has declined from 30 percent to 19 percent, while employment in the trade and service sectors has grown from 39 percent to 48 percent. The movement out of the manufacturing trades has been especially pronounced among young adult blacks, with a decrease from 46 percent of jobs held by blacks (male and female) in 1974 to 26 percent in 1984 (Bound and Johnson, 1992; Sum and Fogg, 1987).

The loss of manufacturing job opportunities has significantly affected the wages available to less educated workers since manufacturing has traditionally been a high-wage sector for blue-collar and skilled workers. Overall employment levels may also be affected, especially in situations where young, less skilled workers are unable to obtain service-sector jobs (due to the demand for higher skill levels) or unwilling to accept them (due to lower wages). For young blacks, the loss of manufacturing jobs is even more important because relative wages for black workers have been higher in this sector than in others (Berlin and Sum, 1988; Krueger and Summers, 1987; Sum and Fogg, 1987). These sectoral shifts account for an estimated 25 to 33 percent of the relative decline in the wages of young and less educated workers (Blackburn et al., 1990; Katz and Murphy, 1991; Bound and Johnson, 1992). Declining manufacturing employment accounted for 33 to 50 percent of the decline in the employment-to-population ratio of young black dropouts in the 1970s (Bound and Holzer, 1991).

Technological Change

Changes in production technology raise the overall education levels needed by industry, thereby diminishing employment opportunities for less educated workers. Studies over time and across industries have found positive associations between various measures of technological progress (e.g., capital spending, R&D spending, employment of technical personnel) and wage differentials among education levels. The evidence supports the notion that, on average, technological change tends to increase inequality between skill groups (Hamermesh, 1986; Bartel and Lichtenberg, 1987; Mincer, 1991; Allen, 1991).

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

Rising Unemployment

The average rate of unemployment has risen steadily over the past several decades (Murphy and Topel, 1987). After adjusting for cyclical changes, unemployment rates of 4 percent or less were common in the 1950s and 1960s, but unemployment seldom fell below 6 percent in the 1970s and 1980s. While there was improvement in overall unemployment in the late 1980s, even the lowest rate (5.2 percent) was well above the rates of earlier decades, and particularly tight labor markets were limited to a small number of metropolitan areas (Freeman, 1991). The higher average unemployment rates of the past 20 years appear to have contributed to the lower employment and earnings of young workers, especially among the less educated and blacks—populations that are particularly sensitive to aggregate changes in unemployment (Clark and Summers, 1982; Freeman, 1991). These workers are the first to be laid off during recessions and the last to be rehired during periods of recovery; their wages also appear to be sensitive to the tightness or looseness of the labor market (Freeman, 1991).

Immigration

During the past two decades, an estimated 750,000 legal and illegal immigrants entered the United States annually (Warren and Passel, 1987; Borjas et al., 1991b). Immigrant workers have increased the workforce of high school dropouts by approximately 25 percent, the workforce of high school graduates by 6 or 7 percent, and the workforce of college graduates by 10 to 11 percent (Borjas et al., 1991a). In the aggregate, this influx of foreign-born workers does not seem to have had a statistically significant impact on the employment and earnings of natives in cities such as New York or Los Angeles, cities that have many immigrants in comparison with cities like Kansas City or Cleveland, which have relatively few immigrants (Borjas, 1986; Altonji and Card, 1989; LaLonde and Topel, 1989). However, it does appear that the immigration of less educated workers affects the earnings and employment of natives with similar skill levels in the population as a whole as "spillover" from immigrant-intensive cities to other parts of the country. Perhaps 20 percent of the deterioration in the market for high school dropouts is due to the influx of less educated immigrants (Borjas et al., 1991a).

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS INFLUENCING JOB AVAILABILITY AND EARNINGS

Minimum Wage and Unions

Unionization and the minimum wage have often protected young workers, whose market position is generally weak. In recent years, these protections have been less effective. The federal minimum wage rose by only 109 percent between 1972 and 1990 (from $1.60 to $3.25), well short of the 191 percent inflation rate over the same period. Even the current statutory rate of $4.25 leaves a family of four that has one full-time earner at less than two-thirds of the federal poverty level. Although a lower minimum wage has the beneficial effect of stimulating job creation, particularly for teenagers, there are also costs. A lower minimum wage also constrains the wages paid to unskilled workers, jobs that are held by blacks, high school dropouts and young, less educated black women (Bound and Freeman, 1991; Blackburn et al., 1990). The small gains in employment that these groups have experienced as a result of low minimum-wage levels are not adequate to offset the declining real value of the wages that they earned, thus causing the overall earnings and income of the working poor to decline (Mincy, 1990).

Union membership brings less educated workers a premium in wages and fringe benefits relative to those earned by nonunion workers. Membership rates have fallen since the mid-1950s, however, and the decline has been especially steep in recent years. Between 1970 and 1990, union membership in the private sector fell from about 30 percent to only 12 percent. Approximately one-quarter of the falling relative position of less skilled young men is attributable to falling rates of unionization (Blackburn et al., 1990; Card, 1992; Freeman, 1993).

Isolation from Jobs

Worker demand is not always geographically matched to worker supply. Manufacturing employment, over half of which is already suburbanized, has increasingly deserted central cities. This reflects a broader movement of firms and middle-class families away from central cities, particularly from poor neighborhoods in northeastern and midwestern cities, to more affluent suburban areas. One consequence is that manufacturing jobs (and those in other sectors that require less education) have become more suburbanized

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

in the past two decades, while financial and service-sector jobs (which require more education) have become more concentrated in inner cities. These trends are of greater significance to minority workers, who are disproportionately represented in central cities (Holzer, 1991; Wilson, 1987; Kasarda, 1989; see also Chapter 3).

Discrimination

Employment discrimination—generally defined as unequal treatment of individuals who possess equal productive characteristics—occurs as a direct consequence of employers' preferences for certain types of workers. Discrimination occurs in the "candidate" and "entry" and "promotion" stages of the employment process (Braddock and McPartland, 1987; Pettigrew and Martin, 1987). For example, among Chicago area employers interviewed in one study, 47 percent stated that blacks lack basic skills and the work experience necessary to fill "customer service'' occupations; accordingly, recruitment was most often done through high schools and newspapers that reached white middle-class neighborhoods, rather than through those associated with large black populations (Kirschenman and Neckerman, 1990). Other studies have matched pairs of black and white or white and Hispanic men with similar resumes and trained them to behave comparably in interviews. Whites generally received about 50 percent more offers than blacks or Hispanics (Turner et al., 1991; Cross et al., 1989).

The extent to which discrimination has diminished over the past two decades is unclear. Most evidence suggests that racial discrimination against nonwhite men continues, and that women of all races suffer considerable discrimination in comparison with men (Jaynes and Williams, 1989). The previously cited study of Chicago-area businesses found strong prejudices against inner-city black men, who were viewed by employers as "unstable, uncooperative, dishonest and uneducated." Employers screened out job candidates based on class characteristics and were particularly wary of hiring men or women who exhibited speech and dress patterns associated with ghetto culture (Kirschenman and Neckerman, 1990). Although small-scale studies increase understanding of employer attitudes and hiring practices, it is impossible to extrapolate from the results to quantify the effects of this type of discrimination. Available methods are likely to underestimate discrimination, in part because the character of racial discrimination has become more subtle than in previous decades (Bielby and Baron,

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

1986). This factor may explain the inability of researchers to identify the reasons that blacks are less likely to advance to the "top rungs" of organizations (Braddock and McPartland, 1987; Davis and Watson, 1985; Hacker, 1992). Further, discrimination varies depending on the tightness of the labor market and has been shown to increase when overall unemployment rates are high (Tobin, 1965).

CHANGES IN THE SUPPLY AND QUALIFICATIONS OF YOUNG WORKERS

Supply of Young Workers

The large number of "baby boomers" entering the labor market in the 1970s depressed their wages relative to those of older groups, though there has been at least some evidence of "catching up" as this group has aged (Welch, 1979; Bloom et al., 1987). The "baby bust" of the 1960s and early 1970s reduced the number of young people entering the labor market, which might have been expected to raise the relative wages of younger workers across the board. However, this failed to occur, except in a small number of tight labor markets (Freeman, 1991; Mishel and Teixeira, 1991). One explanation may have been a decline in college enrollments, which increased the relative supply of less educated workers. The slowdown in the growth of college graduates in the workforce appears to be a major factor in the falling position of the less educated male workers (Blackburn et al., 1990; Katz and Murphy, 1991).

Adequacy of Basic Skills

Another explanation for decreased earnings among less educated workers is a decline in basic reading and math skills. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 30 percent of adolescents and young adults lack basic literacy skills and are consequently unable to absorb and synthesize written information essential to carrying out an unfamiliar task (Venezky et al., 1987). Declining achievement and test scores in the late 1960s and 1970s have been linked to declining productivity and earnings at both the aggregate and individual levels (Bishop, 1989a,b). Individual scores on basic skills have significant effects on earnings, and the racial gap in scores can explain much of the racial differential in earnings at a given educational level (O'Neill, 1990; Ferguson, 1990). This might explain why blacks—dropouts, high school

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

graduates, and college graduates alike—have substantially less success in the labor market than their white counterparts. Yet the test scores (as well as graduation rates) of young blacks have risen even while their relative and absolute earnings were falling (Bound and Freeman, 1991). Moreover, the relative earnings of less educated workers fell in the 1980s as the cohort aged (Blackburn et al., 1990). Since the schooling and basic skills of a cohort are relatively constant, the declining earnings of the less educated may be explained by higher demands for literacy skills related to the increased complexity of manufacturing processes. Thus higher paying jobs are increasingly less accessible to illiterate or marginally literate workers (Bailey, 1988).

Trends in basic skills cannot explain the declining economic position of less educated young adults. The demand for basic academic skills (due to technological changes and other factors) rose more rapidly over the past 15 years than the supply of young workers with such skills, but other forces are also at work.

Crime

Crime has become an attractive alternative to working for many poor, less educated young men. Among this group, particularly black high school dropouts, criminal involvement has become so common that it must be considered a major determinant in evaluating their rates of participation in legal labor markets. At any time, as many as 18 percent of all 18 to 24-year-old dropouts and 30 percent of 25to 34-year-old dropouts are under supervision of the criminal justice system. Among blacks the figures are much higher: 41 percent of 18to 24-year-old dropouts and over three-quarters of 25- to 34-year-old dropouts (Freeman, 1991). It is estimated that some 20 percent of all young black men are involved with the criminal justice system (Freeman, 1991).

Although it is difficult to estimate earnings from illegal activities, studies suggests that men with limited skills and few legal earnings opportunities net substantially more from criminal activities with rates of pay as much as 2 to 4 times higher than those from legitimate work. This estimate is consistent with ethnographic studies of youths involved in the drug trade (Taylor, 1989; Williams, 1989; Bourgois, 1989). Reuter et al. (1990) estimated median earnings in 1985-1987 for street-level crack dealing in Washington, D.C., at $30 per hour.

The substantial and increasing concentration of crime among high school dropouts suggests that the problem is linked to lack

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

of skills—to functional illiteracy and the inability to perform in a modern technological and service-oriented economy—and to the decline in legitimate employment and earnings opportunities available to the less educated. The financial rewards of criminal activity have also increased with the growth in drug markets, and this may make the attractiveness of participation in illegal markets stronger for young men today than in recent periods.

DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES

Demographic changes have also exerted a powerful influence in increasing the number of young adult households that are poor or on the margins of poverty. There has been an almost 40 percent increase since 1970 in the number of female-headed households with children under age 18. In that year, 2,858,000 families were headed by single mothers; in 1991, the number had increased to 6,823,000, or 9.9 percent of all families in 1970, contrasted with 21 percent of all families in 1991 (Bureau of the Census, 1991). The increase results from women marrying at a later age or remaining single throughout their lives and also from higher rates of divorce and separation (Mare and Winship, 1991). The trend has occurred across racial, ethnic, and income groups. However, the decline in the proportion of black women who are married and living with their husband has been especially dramatic.

Among black women aged 24-29, the percentage that had never married increased from 16.9 percent in 1960 to 53.2 percent in 1987 (Mare and Winship, 1991). Comparable percentages for white women were 12.4 and 26.3. The authors conclude that the decline in marriage rates among black women and the concomitant increase in black babies born to unmarried women has been a major cause of the persistently large gap between family incomes of blacks and whites. Although the illegitimacy ratio (proportion of births to unmarried women to all births) has increased across all race and income groups over the last 20 years, the greatest absolute increase has been among blacks. In 1989, 57 percent of all births to blacks were to unmarried women, compared with 17 percent among white women and 23 percent among Hispanic women (Bureau of the Census, 1990).

The incidence of poverty among female-headed families has stayed consistently 7 to 8 times higher than poverty among married-couple families. In 1990, 57.8 percent of female-headed households in the prime-age group had incomes below poverty. For whites, the percentage was 52.0; for blacks 67.8 and Hispanics

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

72.0. More than half (51.2 percent) of all black children lived in female-headed households in 1990, compared with 16.2 percent of white children and 27.1 percent of Hispanic children. The increase in female-headed households is a more powerful explanatory factor in describing the increase in poverty among prime-age adults than either the decline in the value of real earnings or increases in unemployment. However, the trends are interactive in complex ways and therefore need to be considered simultaneously.

Wilson (1987) has hypothesized that the diminished economic position of young black males is the primary contributing factor to the increasing proportion of black women who have children outside of marriage. Espenshade (1985), Farley and Bianchi (1987), and Farley (1988) have hypothesized that the improved economic position of women has reduced their need to rely upon husbands for income, and thus decreased their incentives to marry, and others have considered the effects of increased years of schooling on age at marriage and lifetime probability of marriage. Mare and Winship's analysis based on census and Current Population Survey data suggest that the changes in employment of young black men may account for about 20 percent of the decline in marriage rates for black women, and that increased earnings and school enrollment have very small effects. The explanation for this remarkable change in family composition is complex, and appears to involve the interaction of social and economic trends over the last several decades that has created a changed climate of expectation about marriage and childrearing.

CONCLUSIONS

Whether measured by earnings or employment, the economic position of prime-age young adults has diminished substantially in the past 20 years, especially among males and those with a high school education or less. The causes include several concurrent economywide trends in labor demand, labor supply, and institutional factors. Demographic changes, particularly the exceptional increase in female-headed households, have strongly influenced the economic position of families headed by young adults. However, the declining economic position of families with children is not confined to female-headed households. Although the demographic trends discussed are important in understanding poverty among children and adolescents, they should not obscure the reality that two-parent families have also experienced a decline in

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

their standard of living. The decline has simply been less precipitous than for female-headed households. Over the last two decades, among families with children, only the top income quintile of two-parent families has experienced a substantial increase in real incomes.

However, the majority of children today rely upon the incomes of parents who have not obtained a 4-year college degree, and it is therefore the earnings and employment outlook for non-college-educated adults that will be critical. What are the economic prospects for future cohorts of less educated young workers? Is it possible that self-correcting mechanisms may work to ameliorate the trends that we have summarized? For example, the rising returns to a college diploma should encourage more young people to enroll in college; the deteriorating wages and employment of dropouts relative to high school graduates should further diminish dropout rates over time. Even if these changes occur, their impact is not likely to change the basic outlook we have described.

The same occupational and industrial shifts that reduced demand for less skilled workers are projected to continue through the 1990s (Personick, 1989). Employment and earnings in manufacturing and in high-wage, blue-collar occupations appear likely to continue to decline, while employment will grow most in areas requiring higher education or in low-wage service jobs. Employment discrimination continues. In poor urban neighborhoods, the social environment compounds the lack of employment opportunities for young people (see Chapter 3). Furthermore, the fact that criminal involvement has become so common among young disadvantaged men is producing a large criminal underclass that is difficult to integrate into the legitimate economy.

Although there is no single reason why young adults had diminishing success in the labor market over the past two decades, and why families headed by prime-age adults suffered a decline in living standards, the trends are persistent. We have described the most plausible explanatory factors to establish why a large and increasing percentage of American children and adolescents are likely to spend significant portions of their lives in or near poverty. The causes of declining family incomes are rooted in complex economic and sociological changes that are only partially understood, and that will therefore be difficult to alter. In the chapters that follow, we examine the major settings that shape the lives of adolescents, consider how these are influenced by family income, and assess how settings influence adolescent behavior and life opportunities.

Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
×

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Suggested Citation:"2 EARNINGS AND EMPLOYMENT." National Research Council. 1993. Losing Generations: Adolescents in High-Risk Settings. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2113.
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At least 7 million young Americans—fully one-quarter of adolescents 10 to 17 years old—may be at risk of failing to achieve productive adult lives. They use drugs, engage in unprotected sex, drop out of school, and sometimes commit crimes, effectively closing the door to their own futures. And the costs to society are enormous: school and social services are overwhelmed, and our nation faces the future with a diminished citizenry.

This penetrating book argues that the problems of troubled youth cannot be separated from the settings in which those youths live—settings that have deteriorated significantly in the past two decades. A distinguished panel examines what works and what does not in the effort to support and nurture adolescents and offers models for successful programs.

This volume presents an eye-opening look at what millions of the nation's youths confront every day of their lives, addressing:

  • How the decline in economic security for young working parents affects their children's life chances.
  • How dramatic changes in household structure and the possibilities of family and community violence threaten adolescents' development.
  • How the decline of neighborhoods robs children of a safe environment.
  • How adolescents' health needs go unmet in the current system.

Losing Generations turns the spotlight on those institutions youths need—the health care system, schools, the criminal justice, and the child welfare and foster home systems—and how they are functioning.

Difficult issues are addressed with study results and insightful analyses: access of poor youths to health insurance coverage, inequities in school funding, how child welfare agencies provide for adolescents in their care, and the high percentage of young black men in the criminal justice system.

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