Derek Thompson is missing a key driver of teen anxiety

A fave writer of mine, Derek Thompson, recently wrote about how, and why, the kids are not okay. I think what he identifies as a source of the problem is actually a symptom of our winner-take-all economy.

Thompson cites startling stats showing how anxious and depressed US teens are and how the problem is getting worse. Then today I also ran across a recent study showing a 26% uptick in pediatric hospitalizations for mental health problems in the US per year between 2009 and 2019. Hospitalizations involving children self-harming increased a whopping 126%.

Thompson identifies increasing pressure for teens to get into good schools as a factor.

The question is “why?” Parents throughout time and space have always wanted their kids to have a better life than they had. What’s motivating US parents to push their teens so hard they’re literally ending up in psych wards?

In The Sum of Small Things, (which I read years ago so forgive me if I misremember) author Elizabeth Currid-Halkett shows how elite spending has shifted from the “conspicuous consumption” of the 1980s to the “conscious consumption” of today. Think fewer Rolexes and sports cars and more yoga retreats and all-organic diets.

A lot of that spending is going toward intensive parenting. Official sports leagues, which have gotten more expensive to participate in over the years, are replacing after school pick-up games. Computer camp is replacing heading out to some cabins in the woods. Kids lives are more structured than ever, and that structure costs both time and money.

Currid-Halkett says while some of this is about parental status signaling, a bigger part of it is anxiety about their kids’ future. Until the 1970’s, the average US kid could reasonably expect a higher standard of living than their parents whether or not they went to college. By the 1980’s that was only true for college grads. Today, the average American kid can expect a worse standard of living than their parents whether or not they go to college. Families’ biggest expenses (healthcare, housing, transportation, and education) have gotten wayyy more expensive over the decades while most workers’ wages haven’t budged.

And it’s not just that life is more expensive but wages aren’t keeping up. Life in the bottom half is worse than it was 50 years ago in a variety of ways.

Marriage is down across the board, but much more so for Americans without a college degree. And less-educated people are more likely to divorce. Which is expensive.

We’ve also erected tons of poverty traps in the US. The only reason it came to light that police in Ferguson, Missouri were systematically using minor traffic violations in poverty-stricken neighborhoods to generate significant revenue is that the DOJ investigated them. In how many more places is this happening?

Today non-college educated adults are more likely to be single parents than their college-educated counterparts and more likely than their parents and grandparents were. Single parenthood is expensive for mothers and fathers. States routinely confiscate up to half of a father’s wages even when he barely makes any money. Worst of all, most of that money never makes it to the kid.

Non-college educated Americans are also more likely than their degreed counterparts and parents and grandparents to spend time incarcerated and have a criminal record. Both of which make it hard to get and keep a job.

Occupational licensure requirements have exploded since 1950, making it even harder to find decent-paying work in the US without a degree. Today hundreds of types of jobs require expensive and time-consuming certifications and licenses, which 23% of all workers here in Alabama are required by law to obtain and maintain.

The average American lives clinging to the side of a rock face that gets steeper the farther down they fall. Forget climbing up. Economic mobility in the US has been low and declining for decades. The thing to do is to try to find a foothold. Because if you don’t, what’s below isn’t a safety net, but incarceration or a death of despair at the very bottom.

And yet, the US as a whole is wealthier than ever. The top ~25% of earners stand at the flat top of the mountain, staring straight ahead at the vista with the rock clingers safely out of sightline below them.

They hop between employers who compete for them with free gourmet lunches, luxury busses to work, flexible work-from-home policies, and unlimited vacation time.

Thompson notes a paradox. People in wealthier countries report higher well-being than people in poorer countries. Their kids, not so much. He lists the mind-boggling hours students in the US, Japan, and South Korea are spending on homework, tutoring, and extracurricular activities meant to set them apart on college applications.

But what about other wealthy countries? Germany and Switzerland are wealthier than Japan or South Korea, at least in terms of per capita GDP. I’ve yet to hear about their teens spending inordinate hours on productive pursuits.

The difference is the rock face. Germany and Switzerland have actual social safety nets. They don’t set poverty traps. They don’t incarcerate huge swaths of their population and saddle them with records that make it difficult for them to find work. The difference between rich and poor isn’t “clinging for dear life” versus comfortable.

The top half of earners are looking at a reality in which not all of their kids will be on the mountaintop. And clinging to the side of the mountain the US has erected is not where they want their kids to end up. So they’re willing to sacrifice some of their kids’ mental health now for the chance to help them avoid avoid downward economic mobility later.

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