Young Disadvantaged Men : Reactions from the Perspective of Race

D promising reforms following the civil rights movement of the 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, the progress of black men since the early 1980s has been relatively stagnant. The black-white gaps in high school graduation, earnings, and unemployment have improved little over the past 30 years. On some indicators, black men are doing steadily worse: faced with poor employment prospects, lesseducated young black men have become increasingly likely to exit the labor force altogether, with rates of labor force participation declining by 17 percent between 1979 and 2000 (Holzer, Offner, and Sorensen 2005). More troubling, roughly 60 percent of black male high school dropouts will end up in prison by the age of 30, with current rates of incarceration exceeding those of formal employment among this group (Pettit and Western 2004). A recent and growing line of research recognizes that the poor prospects for low-income black men have consequences that extend well beyond the individuals themselves. These young men’s fortunes affect the women they partner with and the children they father. Understanding the problems facing young black men today, then, is an important part of understanding problems facing the black family as a whole. This insight is not, of course, entirely new. The controversial Moynihan report, written more Comment: Young Disadvantaged Men: Reactions from the Perspective of Race