Loneliness

Loneliness in the American working class | IN 60 SECONDS

What is afflicting the working class in America today? In a word -- loneliness. For starters, marriage is in retreat. While two-thirds of college-educated women are married at age 40, that's true of half of 40 year old women who never went to college. Divorce is much more common among non college Americans. Most children born to poor or working-class mothers today are born out of wedlock and this is part of a much bigger problem. The institutions that bring people together providing stability, support, modeling and purpose. Those institutions are disappearing from working-class America. While the college-educated in this country increasingly cloister into elite enclaves, the college-educated still generally have robust institutions of civil society such as good public schools tight-knit neighborhoods and professional, associations. Among the working class, though, life is increasingly deinstitutionalized. Less social trust, less belonging, particularly blessed church. So the working class isn't merely less likely to get ahead today they're more likely to be struggling alone. My new book "Alienated America" is about these working-class struggles.