TREND WATCH: What’s Happening? A new PRB report, in which researchers examined 14 different indicators of well-being, finds that Millennial women are worse off overall than previous generations of women were at the same age. The report runs contrary to the popular notion that Millennial women face fewer obstacles than their mothers and grandmothers did.
OUR TAKE: With rising levels of educational attainment and a narrowing gender pay gap, Millennial women are better prepared to succeed than any generation of women in history. But rising rates of suicide, overdose deaths, and poverty show that the stresses of modern life are taking a toll on their health.
Silicon Valley has been left reeling after The New York Times published a lengthy exposé detailing the sexual harassment young female entrepreneurs face while seeking financing. More than two dozen women working in technology described workplaces rife with offensive sexist behavior, an atmosphere that helps explain the significant (and oft-discussed) gender imbalance in the industry.
These concerns are echoed in a recent report from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), which found that the share of women in STEM professions is lower among Millennials than it was among Generation X. The report goes on to identify multiple areas where female progress has stalled or reversed over time, offering a portrait of a generation of young women who continue to face economic and social challenges—some mirroring those their mothers faced, and some different—even as they make impressive gains that have transformed work and family life.
INSIDE THE PRB REPORT
The PRB report offers an overview of 14 different measures of economic, social, and physical well-being—such as income, educational attainment, and mortality rates. Researchers aggregated the indicators over time to calculate and compare index scores for four generations: Silent, Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials.
Overall, according to the analysis, Boomer women’s overall well-being improved hugely (66%) compared to Silent women. But Gen-X women saw only a small uptick (2%) compared to Boomer women. For Millennial women, the news is even worse: Their well-being dipped 1% compared to Gen-X women.
THE GOOD …
At first glance, this conclusion might seem surprising. Headlines tout the progress of Millennial women, often contrasting them with their seemingly stuck male peers. (We’ve pointed this phenomenon out ourselves: “You’re Not the Man Your Father Was.”) Indeed, the PRB researchers found many areas in which today’s women are much better off than their mothers and grandmothers.
Education levels and wages rising. For starters, Millennial women have made significant strides in the classroom. Young women today are more educated than previous generations of women were: PRB reports that the high school dropout rate for young women has fallen over time (from 15% among Boomers to 8% among Millennials), while the share who earn at least a bachelor’s degree has risen (from 22% among Boomers to 38% among Millennials). What’s more, today’s women are also outpacing men at every educational level, with a higher share now obtaining high school diplomas, college degrees, master’s degrees, and doctorates.
As a result of this progress, nearly a third (29%) of married women ages 25 to 34 now earn more than their husbands, up from just 16% in 1981. The gender wage gap has narrowed, with young women’s median earnings rising from 75% of men’s in 1985 to 90% today.
Teen birthrate falling. Meanwhile, the teen birthrate has declined dramatically, thanks to factors like delayed sexual activity and increased use of contraceptives. Preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention show that the 15- to 19-year-old birthrate fell to 20.3 births per 1,000 women in 2016—a record low. In fact, we pinpointed this trend in March as part of our fertility Black Book. (See: “U.S. Fertility: Down for the Count.”)
The teen pregnancy rate—today a mere one-third of what it was back in 1991—began falling rapidly during the mid-1990s. Which means that late-wave Millennials are both the child beneficiaries this trend (since they had older, more mature mothers able to care for them) and the teen beneficiaries (since they are more likely to be older and more mature themselves before having their first child).
… AND THE BAD
These positive trends, however, have occurred alongside several negative trends.
Less representation in lucrative fields. Even as more working women have moved into male-dominated fields, they remain severely underrepresented in the fields with the highest median earnings, such as engineering, architecture, science, and math.
In the 1990s, Gen-X women represented about 1 in 4 workers (25.1%) in STEM jobs, but this has fallen to 1 in 5 (22.5%) for Millennials—which is also lower than the ratio among young Boomer women (22.7%). The decline has been especially pronounced in computer-related occupations, such as programmers, systems analysts, and Web and software developers. Among Boomers, women made up 35% of the workers in these jobs. Among Millennials, it’s only 23%.
Health red flags: suicide. Dangers to women’s physical health and well-being have also grown. The suicide rate among 25- to 34-year-old women has ticked up again after two decades of decline to 6.3 deaths per 100,000 women, exceeding the rate of Boomers (6.0 in 1) and Generation X (4.4 in 1).
To be sure, the overall suicide rate in any age bracket is dominated by male behavior since men commit suicide at a much higher rate than women. And Millennial men continue to be somewhat better off, by this measure, than earlier generations of men. But the rising rate among female teens and young adults is an undeniable sign of rising emotional distress.
Health red flags: maternal mortality. Rates of maternal mortality among women ages 25 to 34 have increased sharply over time. After climbing from 7.5 deaths per 100,000 births for Boomers to 9.2 for Xers, this figure has leapt to 19.2 for Millennials—who now face roughly the same risk of dying from pregnancy-related complications as women the same age did 45 years ago despite vast improvements in medical technology over that time period.
This recent spike is concerning because it’s rare for maternal mortality to regress in high-income countries. The problem is particularly pronounced in states like Texas that lack robust safety nets for new mothers: In fact, if Texas were a country, it would rank last in maternal mortality among the 46 developed nations as defined by the World Health Organization.
Health red flags: drug use and economic strife. The PRB report also notes that young women are more likely to die from drug overdoses and live in poverty. Over the past 15 years, the drug overdose rate for 25- to 34-year-old women has skyrocketed from 2.9 deaths per 100,000 women to 12.5 deaths. Over that time, the share of 30- to 34-year-olds living below the federal poverty line has risen from 12% among Generation X to 17% among Millennials.
To be sure, these particular issues aren’t woman-only problems; drug addiction and increased economic troubles have afflicted a whole generation faced with a rocky job market and stagnant wages. The deaths also constitute a small share of the overall population of young women. The PRB report sometimes biases its overall findings by picking and choosing a standard of comparison that casts women’s progress in a negative light. It compares employment progress with same-age men, but compares health declines with earlier generations of women (even though same-age men are suffering equally or worse—e.g., from the opioid scourge).
THE STORY BEHIND THE NUMBERS
Still, taken together, these trends provide a balanced bird’s eye view of how women’s lives have changed over time.
More choice—for better or worse. Steady educational progress, along with a decline in teen pregnancies, paints a picture of rising individual empowerment. Compared to previous generations of women, Millennial women are more prepared to thrive in a market economy and begin their working lives at or near parity with men. And they are freer than previous generations to make critical life decisions later in life. A population that is generally better educated and postponing marriage or children has an unprecedented number of options.
But this rising sense of empowerment comes with downsides and caveats. For one, increased freedom of choice creates greater pressure on women to dedicate themselves equally to family and career—an anxiety-wracked, and some argue, unrealistic ideal. Men feel this tension much less: A 2013 Pew study found that 51% of working Millennial women with young children say having a family has impacted their career advancement, compared to only 16% of Millennial men.
Part of this anxiety comes from a mismatch between shifting realities and fixed expectations. Even as more women boast the ambition and the credentials for high-powered careers, those who become parents are still expected to fulfill traditional expectations of motherhood. And these typically compromise their advancement. A separate Pew survey found that a majority of Americans think children are better off with a mom who stays at home and doesn’t hold a job. In 2012, the difficulty of balancing work and family was the subject of what became one of the most-read pieces in the history of The Atlantic: an essay from New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”
Other research, meanwhile, has found that the parity between women and men in the workplace doesn’t last. Women’s salaries often fall behind those of their same-aged male counterparts as they grow older. That same Pew study, which examined successive cohorts of women entering the workforce since the 1970s, found a relatively small wage gap for each cohort occurring in the mid-20s. This gap, however, always widens as each cohort moves past age 30—presumably reflecting the growing demands of motherhood.
And then there’s the fact that the expansion of choice does not even apply to many Millennial women. A rising share are single mothers who did not complete college—and today, a lack of a degree disadvantages them more than it did earlier generations. These women are more likely to live in poverty and don’t have the opportunity to pursue their career dreams; instead, they’re working to survive and support their families. In fact, women ages 25 to 34 are the only gender-age category that is more employed per capita in 2017 than in 2007 (before the Great Recession).
WHAT HASN’T CHANGED
In some way, of course, the lives of women haven’t changed at all over time. Millennial women are still grappling with many of the social and structural barriers their mothers and grandmothers did.
Pew finds that Millennial women are nearly as likely as older women to agree that “it’s a man’s world.” These women continue to face gender discrimination and sexism at work, particularly in the world of STEM. Meanwhile, the rising maternal mortality rate has resulted in part from decreased access to reproductive health services, as well as an increased focus on fetal and infant care that hasn’t been paralleled with increased concern for maternal health.
All of these considerations provide a backdrop for the amplified emotional issues among Millennial women. They’re better prepared to succeed, but are struggling with a different set of psychological stressors than previous generations. The steep increase in the suicide rate is a worrisome sign that young women need some way to relieve the anxieties of modern life—or, at the very least, improved access to mental health resources.
For decades, women’s empowerment was equated with the ability to “lean in.” But looking ahead, it may be that the ultimate sign of success Millennial women seek is the freedom to “lean out” and choose exactly which life goals they wish to pursue without guilt.
