Via Kay Steiger, MSNBC finds that young, white Americans are happier than young Americans of color. Boring into it, the survey in particular was of 13-24 year-olds. But what kind of age group is that? It's hard to think of a ten year span that has more heterogeneity than that one.
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13-24?
21 Aug 2007 08:40 pm
Comments (10)
In the radio business, we used to break it up into 13 to 15 and 16 to 24.
And the differences between male 16-24's and female 16-24's is often substantial.
That is a twelve year span, beginning the moment you turn 13 and ending the moment you turn 25.
And any 12-year span starting sooner is more heterogeneous. The winner, if allowed, would be -.75 to 11.25.
Spoken like a true not-much-older-than-24 year old Matt, but I beg to differ. There are three main ages of American life:
1. Childhood;
2. Post-pubescent, pre-marital slackerdom;
3. Post-marital adult responsibilitihood.
(I would also include in the third period a three-to-four year pre-marital prep period of serious cohabitation and gradually getting your adult shit together.)
13-24 is a bit rough, but it captures the age range of that middle period fairly well. For a substantial number of Americans - though by no means all - the middle period is characterized by getting high, getting laid (or approximately laid), listening to music, playing games, going out with friends, working as little as possible, living mainly off full or partial parental support and subsidies, not caring much about limited income anyway, generally having loads of fun, and having no established responsibilities to people other than oneself (if even that).
The third period is characterized for a substantial number of Americans - but by no means all - by assuming a substantially more time-consuming workload and accumulating numerous family and societal responsibilities, particularly the responsibility of providing a fabulously happy 1st and 2nd period for one's children. The third period is typically marked by declining rates of highness, orgasmic diversity, music, games, camaraderie, evening engagements, short hours and free money.
For a forunate minority there is also a fourth period:
4. Enfeebled pre-death relaxation.
It's nice to know our nation's whites are happier, anyway. Good job, whites! (Although I like to refer to them by the old-time sportswriter nickname of Hegemons.)
Personally, people who haven't seen me since I was about 13 or so say I turned out a lot different than they expected. One of the biggest assholes I knew in grade and middle school actually became a nice guy in high school when we both went to different schools. It probably also matters whether or not you went to college and if you went to college somewhat away from home.
I've never understood the 18-34 demographic grouping. At one end you have people just emerging from adolescence, still obsessed with juvenile peer competition and frantically trying to don the trappings of adulthood while often still heavily dependent on their parents. At the other end you have people who have lived the same amount of time again, well along a career path (or having been in one or more dead end jobs for over a decade), married with their own kids, probably owning their own home and with exponentially more responsibilities in general.
13-24 is the whippersnapper demographic, consisting of those damn kids who had better get off my lawn.
It's hard to think of a ten year span that has more heterogeneity than that one.
I guess this would matter if, say, 50% of white 13-year olds were happier than their non-white peers, while only 10% of white 24-year olds were happeier than their non-white peers. Assuming, however, that white kids are happier at every age level, the heterogeneity makes the study more persuasive, not less.
I found this statistic fascinating, however: "28 percent of minorities believe race will hurt them in the quest for a better life. Among whites, 20 percent feel their race will help in getting ahead."
Honestly, I would have expected a wider disparity between whites and minorities when it comes to the impact of race on their respective futures. For some reason, this strikes me as a positive trend.
This kind of thing is often done to get a result that could not be obtained in another way. For example, "X% of girls aged 7-17 have been sexually propositioned by a stranger online" (a stat I actually saw somewhere, if I recall correctly). Not noted is that almost all the propositions were received by 16 or 17 year olds, from young guys of about the same age. We can't reveal that, or parents won't be terrified into demanding action.
Comments closed September 04, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
umm...how about the ten year span right before it?
I think you will also be suprised about the followig perid.
Posted by theCoach | August 21, 2007 9:36 PM