The Wall Street Journal – Josh Zumbrun
“Much has been written about millennials–the nickname for the generation of young people born in the 1980s and 1990s–and the rough time they’ve had in the economy. But now that the generation is getting older, and the oldest millennials are in their mid-30s by some definitions, an increasing number are parents themselves. A new report from Konrad Mugglestone, a policy analyst at Young Invincibles, a Washington-based group that represents the interests of young Americans, has dived into the data on millennial parents (defined in this report as those ages 18 to 34). The biggest challenge has been the damaged economy. The weak economy itself is no surprise, but what’s surprising is that this postrecession period has been especially hard on young parents. Young parents have always been somewhat more likely than nonparents to be in poverty. This has especially been the case in recent years, with close to one-quarter of young parents in poverty. Since 2009, the share of impoverished young people has been higher than at any other point in the past 25 years. Since 2009, 16% of young people without children were in poverty, up 5 percentage points from the late 1990s. As many as 23% of young parents were in poverty, however, an 8 percentage point increase.”(more)