It’s all about self-pitying with incels. We just have to hope that they don’t take out their misery on the women around them.
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Question for clarification: There’s marriage, and then there’s marriage-like relationships. Both are used by demographers. Are you perceiving an avoidance of both, or just the former?
There is definitely a small subgroup that are in “marriage-like” relationships, but most of these educated African-American female friends often talk about the lack of “worthy and unattached Black men” (especially to my wife) more than the avoidance of getting into a serious relationships or getting married.
That happened in Canada, unfortunately.
How many of them have married non-Black men? And how many Black men have married non-Black women?
The reason I ask is that educated Black women had the option of marrying men of other races, which were more likely to be educated. For various reasons they may have not chosen that path, but it was an option.
But if white men also significantly disappear from the college ranks, their large representation of the population doesn’t allow for other substitutions to meaningfully fill in.
The cost of college is outrageous. Maybe parents of men have reached the tipping point and would rather their sons take up a trade, join the military, or start a landscaping business instead of taking on a mountain of debt in their 50s.
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So you are suggesting that the cost of college is too outrageous to educate men, but not so outrageous that it would prevent the education of women?
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I’m suggesting parents are more likely to push their male children into the trades, the military or landscaping.
Why?
See 2019 college entering data for recent high school grads: Recent high school completers and their enrollment in college, by sex and level of institution: 1960 through 2019
In 2019, about 70% of females who graduated HS that year attended college, while 62% of males did. Note there are also more females graduating high school than males (207K more in just 2019) and obviously that is part of the issue as well.
What that shakes out to his 2019 HS grad enrollment in college was 56% female, which in absolute numbers was 261K greater than the number of 2019 male HS grads enrolling in college. Remember this is just for one year of college enrollment.
The most recent 6 year graduation data show that these females will also graduate college at a higher rate than the males. Fast Facts: Undergraduate graduation rates (40)
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But how many females don’t graduate high school? The non-college cohort would include non-high school graduates, the 30% that graduated and didn’t attend college and those that went to college, but didn’t graduate.
Because the “traditional” trades are dominated by men.
Electricians: 2.4% women
Plumbers: 5.1% women
Carpenters: 3.2% women
HVAC: 1.4% women
Landscaping: 6.5% women
Construction: 10.3%
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91% of girls graduate from high school (and, I think, around 89% of boys). It’s pretty high for both genders.
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I’m sure those numbers are easy enough for you to figure out!
Some parents may be pushing their sons into the trades, the military or other forms of employment but it is highly dependent on the community you live in. In our town (well educated, upper middle class in MA) about 88% of graduates go on to a 4 year college and most of the rest attend the local community college. Only a handful join the military or go right to work. Boys are equally likely to be heading off to college as girls and there are just as many standout male scholars as female.
They have the option, sort of. Due to Western beauty standards and all it is much, much harder for black women to find partners outside of their race than women of other races/ethnicities. I’ve seen data somewhere to suggest that it is easier for black men to date outside of their race then black women. And I wouldn’t say black men have it easy when it comes to interracial dating. That and the education gap is why so many professional black women are single.
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In addition to this, there is also the benefit of the college degree. Historically, benefit of college degree has been about $1 million in lifetime earnings. But we hear so many talk about “crushing” and “stifling” student loan debt which per borrower amounts to a small amount compared to that expected benefit of the degree. So seems like at least to many, the value of the college degree has decreased in terms of life time earnings. I agree that men have more options in terms of the trades. And many of the “trades” that are more open to women (such as those in medical fields in the way of tech positions) often require some amount of college level certifications/degrees.
That’s not an explanation, so was going to college.
The trades were always dominated by men, but the fact didn’t change the number of college students. You need an actual proof of your claim.
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A NCES list of historical college enrollment by year is at Recent high school completers and their enrollment in college, by sex and level of institution: 1960 through 2019 and summarized below. It looks like women started to have a higher 4-year college enrollment than men in the 1990s and that difference has gradually increased over time. Women also have a higher rate graduation rate than men in both high school and college, so the difference in portion of male/female adults who have college degrees is no doubt larger than suggested by the enrollment stats below.
% of Recent High School Grads Enrolled in 4-Year College
2019 – 49% female / 39% male
2018 – 45% female / 42% male
2017 – 50% female / 37% male
2016 – 50% female / 42% male
2015 – 46% female / 41% male
Median of 2015-19 – 49% female / 41% male
2005 – 47% female / 42% male
1995 – 43% female / 37% male
1985 – 37% female / 39% male
1975 – 32% female / 34% male
The reasons for this gender difference are complex and multifaceted. One factor in the change over time is societal shift in gender roles. Women are more likely to be encouraged to attend college than decades ago and have an independent career from husband, and less likely to be encouraged to be a housewife . Women are more likely to pursue STEM, less likely to experience gender discrimination in hiring and salary (although still very common), etc.
This change in societal roles contributes to why the % of women enrolled in college has increased over time, but it doesn’t explain to why it has increased to larger than the % of men enrolled in college. As has been noted, one factor in this difference is men are more likely to choose to work soon after high school than women. This is often greater societal pressure for men to work than women, particularly in lower SES areas. Another factor is that women average better measures of educational success, including but not limited to higher average grades. Students who are more successful in high school are more likely to continue to a 4-year college.
Another key factor is COVID, which probably relates to why the article shows a larger gender difference that the 2019 NCES stats above. College enrollment was abnormally low during COVID, and men seem to have had a greater decline than women. Males probably averaged greater societal pressure to help their family when struggling financial during COVID than women. I’d expect men were also more likely to struggle with online learning than women on average. Some of the areas with increased quality jobs that did not require a degree after/during COVID are in industries for which the vast majority of employees are male.
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The $1 million figure does not control for individual differences or control for inflation. For example, persons born in to higher SES families are far more likely to attend college than persons born in to lower SES persons. Persons born in to higher SES families also average a significantly higher income as adults than persons born in to lower SES families. Is that difference in income entirely due to attending college? Or might other factors faced by many lower SES families impact income besides just whether they attended college?
The study at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4534330/ attempts to control for some of these factors. Specifically they control for race, gender, attending a private HS, early marriage, number of kids, and born in the south. They do not have a direct control for income, nor do they control for a measure of quality of student, such as SAT scores or GPA.
As quoted below, it found a little over $200k increase in lifetime earnings for a bachelor’s. I expect that it would have dropped notably lower with the additional controls mentioned above. It’s also important to note that there is a huge variation in this figure, particularly in regards to major and planned career field. Some career fields are typically quite lucrative with a bachelor’s. Others typically are not.
Assuming a 4 % annual real discount rate, the net present lifetime value of BA compared with HSG at age 20 drops to about $259,000 for men and $180,000 for women.
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