Perspective

“The figures suggest that a number of women who put off having babies after the 2007-09 recession are forgoing them altogether. Kenneth M. Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire, estimates 4.8 million fewer babies were born after the recession than would have been born had fertility rates stayed at prerecession levels.”
“One bright spot in Thursday’s figures, which are preliminary, is a continued sharp decline in teen births, which fell 7% last year. Since 2007, the teen birthrate has declined by 55%, and is down 70% since its peak in 1991. Children born to adolescents are more likely to have poorer educational, behavioral and health outcomes throughout their life.”
“Mr. Johnson estimates that lower teen fertility accounts for about one-third of the overall decline in births among U.S. women.”
“The increase in women attending college is another force behind the birth decline, researchers say. Those with more skills face a greater trade-off if they interrupt their careers to have children.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Continuing Jobless Claims 5/17

“The number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits hit the lowest level since 1973. Layoffs are becoming increasingly rare as the job market tightens further.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – US Job Vacancy Duration 5/18

“More big deals for already large private companies means less left for early-stage startups.”

“America’s housing wealth has staged a complete recovery since the financial crisis, but the holdings are increasingly skewed towards older borrowers and those with strong credit ratings and away from the young, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said.”
“Home ownership rates among those under 45 have slid sharply since the previous boom. As a result, many younger Americans have missed out in a house price resurgence that has taken values up by 50% from the crisis-era trough.”
“The New York Fed’s finding suggest that, on an aggregate level, America’s stores of wealth have fully rebounded from the crash, buoyed by a recovery that has now been running for 106 months, one of the longest on record. Financial wealth, which includes stocks and other financial assets, now stands at more than $80tn, more than 75% above the 2009 trough.”
“Yet the prosperity boom has been concentrated in a relatively small sliver of the population. The top 10% of households own 84% of stock market wealth, for example.”
“Housing wealth tends to be more widely distributed, but here too there are signs that larger sections of the population are missing out, in part because mortgage lending standards are far tighter than before the crisis.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: NY FED – US Non-Housing Debt Balance 5/18

“Malaysian police said they had seized 284 boxes of luxury handbags and more than 70 bags of jewelry from properties in the country’s capital as part of the new government’s probe into billions of dollars missing from the country’s 1MDB fund.”