This tracks with my observations, but that chart is stupid.
One factor that I think drives men but particularly women's participation in higher education is the credentialling of female dominated industries. Being a teacher never used to require a 3 or 4 year degree and a Bachelors. My mother-in-law got her diploma of teaching 2 years after high school and was in a classroom for 6 months of that two years. She cut her teeth teaching in Bondi Public school before Bondi was gentrified, it was a lesson in the best and worst of humanity. Nursing was basically an apprenticeship until the 1970s as well. So was engineering, business administration, childcare, accounting, journalism, radio and television broadcasting etc... cadetships, apprenticeships and professional development have all been outsourced to universities which I think has reduced the need for 'entry level' jobs to be provided because workplaces use degrees as a heuristic for quality control in these professions. Now its coming back to bite us because we've pushed a ton more kids into academic environments that aren't suited to academics, or simply can't afford the opportunity cost of part-time work for 3 years. Many would be wonderful nurses, teachers, journalists, engineers etc if they had access to apprenticeship/cadetship models of education in these fields where quality is really dependent on actual hands-on experience and could earn a decent wage for real world work.
You now need a three year degree to fill out paperwork and break wind in an office these days and we deny teenagers VALUABLE life experience by insisting that they must get into Uni at all costs so don't get that job stacking shelves at woollies or at the bakery or a lifeguard at the pool over summer, it will distract you from studying.
Gak! not the charts, I meant the tweet list at the top! Those charts are amazing actually. Full marks for making the colours very easy to distinguish from an ex-graphic designer. Only a mistake a sleep deprived mum makes.
I assume you apply that to doctors dentists lawyers - indeed the only profession that has long term history of requiring a degree is the clergy. And that is only a 12 th century innovation - that created universities. Law and medicine were craft learnt well into the 19th century.
In the 80's working in admin for a major Aussie Corporation, I had a female uni student, on work experience, tell me that 'uni students should get jobs first'. To which I muttered, 'so I with way more work experience than you should be made unemployed so that you can have a job because you think you are better because I don't have a uni background and yet you are here asking me how to do admin work.' She shut up and the topic was never spoken about again.
Another story: I was working for a small import firm in Melbourne doing orders, admin, payroll = 4 people and then I realised that they were advertising the job. I applied for the job formally to then have the owner manager tell me that they wanted someone with an accounting degree, which I certainly did not have!!
So I was good enough for the job as an Agency / Casual employee but not good enough for it as a permanent employee!!!???
I sat down with him one day and told him it was over the top to employee someone with the qualifications he was demanding. I got the job. I lasted approximately three months, but that is another story of working in an 'overbearing' family owned busy where mummy and daddy played ping pong with me when it came to decisions = Ask Husband. Ask Wife.
I personally think that some of this 'demand for Certificates' is because a lot of HR people are lazy and don't have the personal skill set to decide who is the right person. So they fall back on 'certificates' to make the decision easier for them and to justify the decision they have made based on Certificate. It is an unending cycle.
It seems that just about all categories of people are 'starting life out later' as a reflection of population ageing - increasing retirement ages, increasing amount of time spent studying, and careers starting out later.
One of the difficulties in trying to make an 'apples-to-apples' comparison between demographics and generations is that consumption spending was relatively more expensive as a share of income for young boomers, for example. There were also fewer available consumption opportunities. So high asset prices are arguably a reflection of 'cheap consumption.'
I think that if one was to take a typical 1970s consumption basket and rely on it for their living today, they would have considerably more income leftover to service housing costs. It would, however, probably not be a particularly adequate standard of living by today's standard.
We often associate the period of decades ago with 'better value' for money in terms of price levels being much lower than they are today. What matters, however, is the level of those prices relative to the incomes. For many goods and services, the relative prices today are much cheaper than they were decades ago.
If you look at James Nuzzo's chart in the footnote, you will see that until the mid-1970s university enrolments weren't growing fast, and especially not for women.
However, it is good to keep in mind that a declining age of marriage was a global post-WWII phenomenon driven by many factors.
A female friend works 60% of a full time job with juvenile delinquents.
Her female manager asked her if she would take over the six month pregnancy vacancy and this would mean more money, of course. But a catch was that if the person doing her job was away then she would have to take the slack for that also. Fair enough to think about saying Yes.
However, what did I think?
Great opportunity, said I.
Yeah, but more work.
But you will get more money!!
Yeah, but life is not all about money....
Well, you have to decide what you want!
I want more time.... (at this point this is my friends theme in life. I need time to relax, read, drink coffee, go on holidays. etc., etc.,)
The bit that stumped me goes something like this:
my therapist tells me that Gen Z are working less now a days..
This is the other theme which I slowly woke up to. That is that my female friend wants to be success, wants to be appreciated, wants to be ??? but asks around so that people can back up her decision or 'what should I do?'
Do not get me wrong... life is good and not so easy sometimes... and difficult decisions made today might be regretted tomorrow... but it is only six months....
What struck me was: I wonder what will happen when she is forty or sixty and is struggling, I hope not, with money and then cries 'gender pay gap'.... when I thought this, it was like my life flashed before my eyes."aaaahhh that's how it works. Female makes decision now and then later on it is not her fault!'
? nothing is stopping young people from studying less and buying homes earlier?! You think people haven’t been spending longer in school across the OECD for economic reasons??
You think 4 years of school is the reason for delayed home purchase but not way-above inflation home prices? How many years of payments remaining did college-educated couples face at the age of 35 in the past vs today? What share of monthly expenses were their shelter costs?
Amortizations have grown longer over the decades and interest rates have gone down, and yet payments eat a larger share of income.
Do Canadians just stay in school until 35? Why is their first home purchase age 38?
You actually disagree with this statement? Homes are more expensive than they were at nearly anytime in the past, and family units are shrinking as a result.
Your data seems so cherry picked for this “nothing to see here” narrative it makes me wonder if higher home prices benefit you personally. Do they?
I live in Canada. That is the craziest housing take I’ve heard. Pick a city and look at the rents over the last decade then look at incomes for those cities.
My grandmother used to say “statisticians are liars, damn liars”
You’re using data that includes all households for your chart, right? But many households have no mortgage and are thus, unaffected by price increases. Isolate renters and home owners with mortgages only, in particular new renters and first time home buyers. Different story.
This tracks with my observations, but that chart is stupid.
One factor that I think drives men but particularly women's participation in higher education is the credentialling of female dominated industries. Being a teacher never used to require a 3 or 4 year degree and a Bachelors. My mother-in-law got her diploma of teaching 2 years after high school and was in a classroom for 6 months of that two years. She cut her teeth teaching in Bondi Public school before Bondi was gentrified, it was a lesson in the best and worst of humanity. Nursing was basically an apprenticeship until the 1970s as well. So was engineering, business administration, childcare, accounting, journalism, radio and television broadcasting etc... cadetships, apprenticeships and professional development have all been outsourced to universities which I think has reduced the need for 'entry level' jobs to be provided because workplaces use degrees as a heuristic for quality control in these professions. Now its coming back to bite us because we've pushed a ton more kids into academic environments that aren't suited to academics, or simply can't afford the opportunity cost of part-time work for 3 years. Many would be wonderful nurses, teachers, journalists, engineers etc if they had access to apprenticeship/cadetship models of education in these fields where quality is really dependent on actual hands-on experience and could earn a decent wage for real world work.
You now need a three year degree to fill out paperwork and break wind in an office these days and we deny teenagers VALUABLE life experience by insisting that they must get into Uni at all costs so don't get that job stacking shelves at woollies or at the bakery or a lifeguard at the pool over summer, it will distract you from studying.
I agree with your overall vibe that there is a costly arms race of over-education. https://x.com/DrCameronMurray/status/1988747808695022075?s=20
Though I have no idea which chart you think is stupid.
Gak! not the charts, I meant the tweet list at the top! Those charts are amazing actually. Full marks for making the colours very easy to distinguish from an ex-graphic designer. Only a mistake a sleep deprived mum makes.
I assume you apply that to doctors dentists lawyers - indeed the only profession that has long term history of requiring a degree is the clergy. And that is only a 12 th century innovation - that created universities. Law and medicine were craft learnt well into the 19th century.
In the 80's working in admin for a major Aussie Corporation, I had a female uni student, on work experience, tell me that 'uni students should get jobs first'. To which I muttered, 'so I with way more work experience than you should be made unemployed so that you can have a job because you think you are better because I don't have a uni background and yet you are here asking me how to do admin work.' She shut up and the topic was never spoken about again.
Another story: I was working for a small import firm in Melbourne doing orders, admin, payroll = 4 people and then I realised that they were advertising the job. I applied for the job formally to then have the owner manager tell me that they wanted someone with an accounting degree, which I certainly did not have!!
So I was good enough for the job as an Agency / Casual employee but not good enough for it as a permanent employee!!!???
I sat down with him one day and told him it was over the top to employee someone with the qualifications he was demanding. I got the job. I lasted approximately three months, but that is another story of working in an 'overbearing' family owned busy where mummy and daddy played ping pong with me when it came to decisions = Ask Husband. Ask Wife.
I personally think that some of this 'demand for Certificates' is because a lot of HR people are lazy and don't have the personal skill set to decide who is the right person. So they fall back on 'certificates' to make the decision easier for them and to justify the decision they have made based on Certificate. It is an unending cycle.
It seems that just about all categories of people are 'starting life out later' as a reflection of population ageing - increasing retirement ages, increasing amount of time spent studying, and careers starting out later.
One of the difficulties in trying to make an 'apples-to-apples' comparison between demographics and generations is that consumption spending was relatively more expensive as a share of income for young boomers, for example. There were also fewer available consumption opportunities. So high asset prices are arguably a reflection of 'cheap consumption.'
I think that if one was to take a typical 1970s consumption basket and rely on it for their living today, they would have considerably more income leftover to service housing costs. It would, however, probably not be a particularly adequate standard of living by today's standard.
We often associate the period of decades ago with 'better value' for money in terms of price levels being much lower than they are today. What matters, however, is the level of those prices relative to the incomes. For many goods and services, the relative prices today are much cheaper than they were decades ago.
Why was the average age of marriage falling between 50s and 70s despite years of education going up? Teen pregnancy epidemic?
If you look at James Nuzzo's chart in the footnote, you will see that until the mid-1970s university enrolments weren't growing fast, and especially not for women.
However, it is good to keep in mind that a declining age of marriage was a global post-WWII phenomenon driven by many factors.
So then has age-at-homeownership stayed the same for those who do not go to university? This would make your story more convincing.
A female friend works 60% of a full time job with juvenile delinquents.
Her female manager asked her if she would take over the six month pregnancy vacancy and this would mean more money, of course. But a catch was that if the person doing her job was away then she would have to take the slack for that also. Fair enough to think about saying Yes.
However, what did I think?
Great opportunity, said I.
Yeah, but more work.
But you will get more money!!
Yeah, but life is not all about money....
Well, you have to decide what you want!
I want more time.... (at this point this is my friends theme in life. I need time to relax, read, drink coffee, go on holidays. etc., etc.,)
The bit that stumped me goes something like this:
my therapist tells me that Gen Z are working less now a days..
This is the other theme which I slowly woke up to. That is that my female friend wants to be success, wants to be appreciated, wants to be ??? but asks around so that people can back up her decision or 'what should I do?'
Do not get me wrong... life is good and not so easy sometimes... and difficult decisions made today might be regretted tomorrow... but it is only six months....
What struck me was: I wonder what will happen when she is forty or sixty and is struggling, I hope not, with money and then cries 'gender pay gap'.... when I thought this, it was like my life flashed before my eyes."aaaahhh that's how it works. Female makes decision now and then later on it is not her fault!'
The times are interesting...
? nothing is stopping young people from studying less and buying homes earlier?! You think people haven’t been spending longer in school across the OECD for economic reasons??
You think 4 years of school is the reason for delayed home purchase but not way-above inflation home prices? How many years of payments remaining did college-educated couples face at the age of 35 in the past vs today? What share of monthly expenses were their shelter costs?
Amortizations have grown longer over the decades and interest rates have gone down, and yet payments eat a larger share of income.
Do Canadians just stay in school until 35? Why is their first home purchase age 38?
You actually disagree with this statement? Homes are more expensive than they were at nearly anytime in the past, and family units are shrinking as a result.
Your data seems so cherry picked for this “nothing to see here” narrative it makes me wonder if higher home prices benefit you personally. Do they?
The shelter cost share of income has been flat in Canada for decades, as my article coming out in a fortnight will explain.
I live in Canada. That is the craziest housing take I’ve heard. Pick a city and look at the rents over the last decade then look at incomes for those cities.
Have you checked the data? I have https://x.com/DrCameronMurray/status/1990294771538256043?s=20
Yes, I have. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/240910/dq240910b-eng.htm
My grandmother used to say “statisticians are liars, damn liars”
You’re using data that includes all households for your chart, right? But many households have no mortgage and are thus, unaffected by price increases. Isolate renters and home owners with mortgages only, in particular new renters and first time home buyers. Different story.
What and I supposed to be seeing at that link exactly?
My data is renter households only (I will double-check it, though). A flat rent-to-income ratio over time is very normal and common in most countries.
Yes, it is a cyclically bad time for first homebuyers, but not historically abnormal.