NEWSWIRE: 3/27/17
- Activision Blizzard and other gaming companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on software designed to prevent and identify cheating. The rapid growth of e-sports has raised the financial stakes surrounding gamers who use glitches and codes as “performance-enhancing drugs.” (The Wall Street Journal)
- NH: Competitve e-sports, staged in venues for large audiences, are now a big deal on college campuses. But by accepting prize money from cable and gaming companies, college e-sports could be the final hit that blows open the NCAA's hypocritical "amateur" rules that allow everyone to make money off college athletes except the athletes themselves.
- Fully 90% of Millennials say they’ve binge-watched video content, viewing six episodes or five hours of content on average. For younger generations, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video—platforms on which viewers can watch entire seasons at once—are the new normal in entertainment. (Deloitte)
- Contributor Michael North gives a good reason why Boomers and Millennials should set aside their differences: They need each other. He’s right: Boomers need the taxes of working-age Millennials to finance their massive entitlements and will need to rely on Millennial caregivers as they age, while Millennials need Boomer leaders to invest in policies that will lessen the financial burden on young adults. (Quartz)
- NH: Of course, the most important and Millennial-friendly policy that Boomers can "invest" in is ratcheting down in the projected future income stream they expect to receive from federal entitlements and from state and local pension plans over the next few decades. This is one issue that the moderate GOP in Congress get right—and where the Trump White House is clueless. Why bother investing $1 trillion in infrastructure when you don't even acknowledge the $100 trillion+ in unfunded benefit liabilities.
- The United States ranks #34 on the Bloomberg Global Health Index of 163 countries—behind nations such as Slovenia (#27) and Lebanon (#32). These data reaffirm the fact that national spending on acute health care is rarely tied to actual population health. (Bloomberg Business)
- The mortality rates of 50- to 54-year-old whites with a high school degree or less were 30% higher than the rates of blacks overall in the same age bracket in 2015. While much has been written about the alarming mortality rate rise among white Boomers, first-wave Gen-Xers are also driving an increase in “deaths of despair”—that is, deaths from drugs, alcohol-related liver diseases, and suicide. (The Brookings Institution)
- According to an analysis of Census data, the share of 18- to 34-year-olds living with parents nears 45% in some U.S. locales, like Miami and San Bernardino. While some Millennials certainly return to the nest out of financial necessity, many are simply comfortable under the same roof as Mom and Dad. (ABODO)
- NH: The big takeaway here is that the cities with the highest Millennial live-at-home rates have somewhat higher youth unemployment rates—and much higher rents and property values. Individually, the likelihood of a Millennial living at home (or believing they will never match their parents' living standard) is inversely correlated with parental income.
- Over 70% of Boomers said they would be less likely to buy a smartphone without a discount—compared to only 35% of Millennials. While Boomers don’t mind bargain-hunting for a new phone, Millennials are willing to pay a little more for a high-quality product they plan to keep by their side all the time. (First Insight)
- NH: Boomers became smartphone owners when telecoms subsidized phone purchases in return for gaining a new customer. That era is ending. A rising share of Millennials, moreover, are experimenting with low-cost workarounds that cut out the telecom entirely—such as an "unlocked" phone running only on VoIP service.
- New research shows that Americans are growing more politically polarized, with the biggest increases occurring among the 65+. While many blame the Internet for growing U.S. partisanship, this ignores the fact that its biggest users (Millennials) are a non-confrontational bunch. (National Bureau of Economic Research)
- NH: The typical assumption is that radicalism is most prevalent among the young. But today a significantly larger share of Americans over age 50 consider themselves "conservative" or "liberal" (as opposed to "moderate" or "undecided").
- Two-thirds of U.S. pay-TV customers say they keep their subscriptions simply because it comes bundled with Internet service. The data illustrates the remaining cord-cutting barrier: While many consumers would love to abandon their TV subscriptions, they still must buy Internet from a telecom. (Deloitte)
- Fully 70% of Millennials have a product subscription (e.g., household goods) and 89% have a service subscription (e.g., online video), both the highest of any generation. Millennials see subscriptions as an easy way to get deals and valuable content—and have no qualms about handing over their information to a company. (Vantiv)
- NH: This is a huge finding. Boomers and Xers seek episodic and transient "bargains." Millennials are looking more for a relationship of trust that makes sense over time and that relieves them from the burden of constantly choosing.
DID YOU KNOW?
Preschool: Head Start or Hindrance? In a new op-ed, early-education specialist Erika Christakis voices her concerns about today’s preschool system, which she says “is crushing kids.” What started out as a safe social space for children with two working parents has transformed into a full-blown kindergarten prep class with a heavy emphasis on “seat work” and tightly scripted curricula. Considering the high stakes surrounding kindergarten, it’s little wonder that preschool has amped up the workload: A study last year found that in 2010, the percentage of kindergarten teachers who expected their children to know how to read by year’s end was 80 percent. (In 1998, that share was just 30 percent.) Yet mounting evidence suggests that young Homelanders who are exposed to advanced concepts at an early age eventually perform worse in school. An evaluation of Tennessee’s preschool system found that preschool attendees fared worse on tests measuring literacy, language, and math skills by the time they were in second grade compared to their non-preschool peers.
