Features
The kids are alright
by Ruth Laugesen
New research reveals some surprises about the feckless, at-risk pleasure-seekers of newspaper headlines.
To be young today is apparently to be giddy, self-destructive and eager for far too much dodgy fun. There is the drinking – comatose teens overwhelming emergency rooms at weekends; the oafishness – university students burning couches and fighting police; and the larrikinism – boy racers who write off their cars and other people. All valid – although incomplete – snapshots.
But new research has thrown up another, quieter portrait of a generation of young people studying hard, earning little and making fewer demands on the state for their support than their baby-boomer elders did.
And though some young people may be troubled and desperate, as a group those now in their mid-20s have apparently enjoyed the smoothest passage to adulthood in many decades. Only now has a more urgent concern appeared: the recent recession and still-climbing unemployment have made them vulnerable to being sidetracked as they come into adulthood.
The research, by David Rea and Paul Callister at Victoria University’s Institute of Policy Studies, mined a range of census and other data to build up a picture of the transition to adulthood of groups of New Zealanders born in the 1950s through to the 1980s.
The big differences between the generations are obvious. We know compared with earlier generations, young people – so-called Generation Y – are likely to get married later, if at all, have kids later, if at all, and stay studying longer.
But the scale of these changes is remarkable. Most baby boomers born in the 1950s worked and earned throughout their 20s. Only one in five were still studying by age 20. But for those Gen Yers born in the early 1980s, almost one in two were still in education at age 20.
Many people think sponging young people live at home longer these days, backed up by tales told by eye-rolling baby-boomer parents. But that received wisdom turns out to be wrong. Those now in their late 30s and early 40s (born 1967-71) were more likely to still be raiding their parents’ fridge into their 20s: 33% of them were still living at home in their early 20s, compared with 31% for the slice of Gen Y born from 1982 to 1986.
And although Generation Y seem amazingly cashed up, with funds for lashings of alcohol and expensive cellphones, it turns out they’re earning less than some less than some of their elders were. In recent times, young men aged 20-24 have earned an average of just under $25,000 a year – whereas baby-boomer men born 1952-56 earned an average of more $30,000 in their early 20s (both figures are in 2006 dollars).
But the big difference is the boomers were more likely to have spent their money on essentials, and to have moved out of home; they may even have started to raise a family. The main reason for lower earnings now is probably that more young men are studying, rather than earning.
What about those accusations of fecklessness? On at least one important measure, today’s young people are making more careful decisions. A declining proportion of women in their early 20s are starting adult life as sole parents – just over 10% of women in their early 20s were solo mothers in the most recent census in 2006, compared with almost 12% a decade earlier when Generation X were coming through.
Young people today are also less likely than their elders to lean on the state for unemployment and other benefits. Gen Xers born from 1972 to 1976 had the highest prevalence of benefit receipt, with nearly 40% indicating they had received some income from benefits over the previous year when in their early 20s.
But for Generation Y members who hit their early 20s in 2006, that had fallen to around 18%. One reason is that unemployment rates have dropped. But another is that the proportion of young people receiving the domestic purposes benefit has declined over time.
And the element of danger in young people’s lives? Their levels of alcohol abuse may be going through the roof, but on some other measures they are less at risk than some of their elders were.
Mortality rates for young people peaked in the early 1980s to mid-1990s, when the Gen Xers born from 1967 to 1971 were coming of age. Since then, death rates for the young have been on a steep downward track.
The two largest contributors to young deaths are motor vehicle accidents and suicide. The number of young people dying in vehicle accidents has been falling, and is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. Suicide rates for young people rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but have since fallen.
Callister says some of the fall in motor vehicle deaths could be down to better medical care rather than good sense in the young. He notes that advances in emergency medicine, such as the greater use of helicopters to get accident victims to hospital quickly, are saving the lives of more car-crash victims, pushing death rates down.
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