The likelihood of 20-somethings moving to another state has dropped well over 40 percent since the 1980s, according to calculations based on Census Bureau data. The stuck-at-home mentality hits college-educated Americans as well as those without high school degrees. According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of young adults living at home nearly doubled between 1980 and 2008, before the Great Recession hit. Even bicycle sales are lower now than they were in 2000. Today’s generation is literally going nowhere. This is the Occupy movement we should really be worried about….
In the most startling behavioral change among young people since James Dean and Marlon Brando started mumbling, an increasing number of teenagers are not even bothering to get their driver’s licenses. Back in the early 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year-olds proudly strutted out of the D.M.V. with newly minted licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008 ”” even before the Great Recession ”” that number had dropped to 65 percent….
I thought the whole point of high gas prices etc. was to stop the use of the automobile and wean the US off gasoline? This is a reflection of that. So they are getting what they want and now they are unhappy about the decline in mobility?
On the other hand, South Dakota has complained for years about its young people moving away to find careers. The Governor even created an incentive fund to bring in key professionals from out of state. So let’s see if our grads, staying closer to home, can come up with some more creative business endeavors than our every-other-corner casinos and “pay-day lenders.”
Br. Michael,
Don’t you know that this administration wants to paint a rosy picture of the mobility of yesteryear? They forgot that the goal of high gas prices (which the article says isn’t the cause of the lack of mobility) was incompatible with mobility. Actually, the article does an interesting job of blaming technology for the couch potato mentality…forgetting that promoting hi-tech stuff was one of their signature efforts, too. The administration loses either way…let’s hope that extends to November.