“There has been more of a transition where parents are supporting their adult children for longer,” she said. “The data do show that more young adult men live with their parents than women. The wealth transfer from older generations to younger generations is part of that story.”
And then there are the partners. “Almost everybody you talk to will have a story” about supporting an unemployed man, Ullrich said, adding that what’s changed isn’t the dynamic itself, but the fact that it no longer carries the stigma it once did. The stay-at-home boyfriend, once a punchline, is now a statistically significant labor market phenomenon.
A landmark paper published in the Journal of Political Economy, first circulated through the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that roughly 70% of the hours young men aren’t working are being spent on video games and recreational computer use. The economists calculated that improvements in gaming technology since 2004 alone can explain nearly half the increase in young men’s leisure hours.
“I think that’s part of the story — the basement story,” Ullrich said, in reference to a trope of young men playing video games in their parent’s basement.
The opioid epidemic compounded it, hitting non-college-educated men especially hard. And critically, men, compared to women, largely don’t qualify for government assistance programs like SNAP or TANF without a disability, meaning when they exit the workforce, the financial burden falls on whoever is closest to them.
What are the qualification for SNAP and TANF related to gender? I thought it was about having kids, which men are free to take care of; though combining incomes and households is kind of a bad idea if you’re trying to qualify for benefits.
It’s because of dependents. More women have dependents than men.
TANF requires a dependent minor child or a pregnant individual.
SNAP only covers 3 months for able-bodied adults without dependents.
EBT/SNAP benefits are supposed to be available for everyone. Unfortunately/ fortunately* the states control who is eligible and what means testing they are going to use. GOP controlled states have decided that if you’re male and working age that you have to spend a fuckton of money up front to get doctors appointments, that if your case survives the decades long process of automated denials and eventually a judge maybe overturning all the illegal denials, despite crippling disabilities, that will maybe say that you are entitled to the benefits that you already paid for with your taxes.
Fortunately* right now because the purple states and blue states ignored the federal EOs that said they needed to do these ridiculous and expensive means testing to determine who gets benefits that, again, you already paid for. All this shit is literally just trying to kill the poor so that the psychologically sick hoarders at the top are able to maintain their disease.