STRAPPED
Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead
October 14, 2005
By Tamara Draut

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Economic Opportunity Program Director Tamara Draut offers a groundbreaking look at the new obstacle course facing young adults as they try to build careers, buy homes, and start families. As Draut explains, various economic and social trends over the last thirty years, as well as adverse government policies, have conspired to alter dramatically the process of becoming an adult. Connecting the economic stagnation of today's young adults to broader social and cultural changes in America over the last three decades, STRAPPED will help jumpstart a national conversation about where the country is failing - and how we can make it right again. www.strappedthebook.com

Why is growing up so hard -- and terrifically expensive -- to do these days, and what can we do about it?

Strapped offers a groundbreaking look at the new obstacle course facing young adults - the under 35 crowd - as they try to build careers, buy homes and start families.  As Tamara Draut explains, getting ahead is getting harder. A college degree is the new high school diploma - but it now costs a fortune to get that degree and students graduate with crippling debts. Good jobs are scarcer thanks tostagnant wages and disappearing benefits. And, the cost of everything - starter homes, health coverage, child care - keeps going up and up. Budding families, even those with two incomes, struggle to pay the bills, while Visa and Master card have become the new safety net. Young adults are starting behind the financial eight ball -- borrowing their way into adulthood and wondering whatever happened to the American Dream.

Is this the way things have to be? Not at all, argues Tamara Draut, a leading young commentator and a fresh voice for change. She shows how the obstacle course bedeviling young adults didn't just happen - it was allowed to happen by a generation of leaders more interested in serving wealthy interests than in investing in the nation's future. Strapped brims with ideas for a new kind of America where every young person can go to college, buy a home, and start a family.

Strapped will help jumpstart a national conversation about where the country is failing --and how we can make it right again.

Tamara Draut is Director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, a national think-tank headquartered in New York City.  Her research and writing have appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Newsweek.  A frequent commentator,Draut has appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, Headline News, CNBC's Closing Bell and ABC World News Tonight.  She lives in New York City with her husband.

www.strappedthebook.com

www.doubleday.com 

Praise for Strapped

"Strapped tells a story that is compelling, frightening, and ultimately liberating.  By giving a clear analysis of what has gone wrong, Draut points the way to how to make it better.  This is a must-read for anyone who is young - or anyone who cares about anyone who is young."

- Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law, Harvard University, co-author of The Two-Income Trap

"Tamara Draut's meticulously researched book explains why the transition to adulthood has become almost impossibly difficult for the children of low- and middle-income families.  Her highly readable account of bad policy choices and changing market forces will persuade you that this problem demands our immediate attention."

- Robert Frank, Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics and Public Policy, Cornell University, author of Luxury Fever

"It's no time to be 21, and we have Tamara Draut to thank for describing to us, in precise detail, the forces arrayed against young people -- and what can be done to alleviate the situation."
- Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter With Kansas?

 "This important book delivers a sharp-eyed assessment of how deeply the middle-class economy has eroded through the Gen-X youth era - and of the debts and other financial burdens that awaitthe new Millennial Generation as collegians and as young workers, householders, and taxpayers.  Change is coming, a new youth activism is brewing, and Strapped helps explain why."

- Neil Howe and William Strauss, co-authors, Generations and Millennials Rising 

"Strapped arms our generation with valuable information in our pursuit of the American dream.  Tamara Draut is a powerful voice for a generation facing fiscal crisis, and her book is required reading for young activists."

- Jehmu Greene, former president, Rock the Vote

Publisher's Weekly:
"It's hard to believe: 'Today's college grads are making less than the college grads of thirty years ago.' In fact, men aged 25 to 34 with bachelor's degrees are making just $6,000 more than those with high school diplomas did in 1972. This is just one of the many shocking statistics uncovered by Draut, a think-tank adviser and media pundit, in this incisive and revealing look at why today's young adults find financial independence so difficult. With catchy terms such as 'debt-for-diploma' and 'paycheck paralysis,' Draut shows why this age group's ability to accomplish the traditional adult markers of school, career and family is stagnating. Her presentation features the one-two punch of well-sourced data and a series of stories from a diverse group of interview subjects to prove her thesis that depressed wages, inflated educational costs, soaring credit card debt and skyrocketing health and child-care expenses present nearly insurmountable obstacles to young adults' success. While Draut's conclusions take conservative politicians to task, they are hardly polemical, and her analysis and solutions are refreshingly free of glib how-to advice. Her book should be a jarring wake-up call to both the generation affected most by the current economic reality and the policy makers facing the consequences for decades to come. (Jan.)"