Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen


Why The Runway To Adulthood is Longer Now

February 25, 2020

How is it that we don’t see four and a half million young Americans? Kids who have fallen through the cracks,not connected to either school or work. People between the ages of 16 and 24 living in their parents basements or in the streets. With virtually no prospects. How is it that the runway to adulthood has gotten longer? Author Anne Kim’s new book Abandoned: America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection reveals that the problem is worst in rural areas. Unlike earlier times, manufacturing and other jobs have disappeared.Kim says “the structure of opportunity is stacked against young people.” The adultification of young people of color, the abandonment of aged-out foster kids, and the private sector unable to step up enough, along with the discovery that brain development at this age is as important as early childhood: there are programs which can cost effectively increase young people’s resilience. And this disconnectedness is one reason young people are drawn to Bernie Sanders!