Youth

Axios -  Americans under 40 saw their wealth rise by a staggering 80% since pre-pandemic — a far higher rate than any other age group, Axios' Emily Peck writes from New York Fed data.  During the pandemic, those under 40, many flush with stimulus checks, took to the stock market and saw big gains.

Reason - Rates of anxiety and depression have seemingly risen for adolescents since 2009. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, rates of adolescent depression have risen from 8.1 percent in 2009 to 15.8 percent in 2019; there is some evidence of a further rise during the pandemic. The suicide rate among Americans aged 10–24 increased from 6.8 per 100,000 in 2007 to 10.7 in 2018. On some dimensions, of course, teens are doing much better than in the past. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the teen pregnancy rate declined by 67 percent from 2007 to 2022. (This is a further decline since the peak in the early 1990s.) Since 1991, the rate of drunk driving fatalities per 100,000 Americans has decreased 70 percent for those under age 21. Youth arrests for violent crime are down by 78 percent since 1994. High school graduation rates have gone up over the past two decades.