Spring 2017
April 17, 2017
Will you go to college? Will you pick a life partner, and if so, who will it be? Are you going to buy a house? How will you care for your health? Will you have children?
These are some of life’s biggest decisions.
We had a chance recently to sit down with Robert Michael and talk about his book, The Five Life Decisions: How Economic Principles and 18 Million Millennials Can Guide Your Thinking. Michael clearly presents the idea that choices matter and that people have more control over their decisions than they might think. An economist at the University of Chicago and former director of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC; one of the largest independent social research organizations in the United States), Michael bases his argument on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a sample of 18 million millennials in the United States, tracking more than a decade of young-adult choices and their consequences.
In a book geared toward the younger generation, Michael shows how the pool of decisions made by people born between 1980 and 1984 and their outcomes can help the rest of us be more aware of the variety of paths that lie before us. In this way, Michael offers readers insight into how their own choices may turn out.
Grouped around the five critical decisions most people face – concerning college, career, health, coupling, and children – Michael reveals how using basic economic principles can help people make more reasonable decisions. While there is no formula for making the right choice, Michael aptly guides his readers through the trade-offs associated with making decisions in each of these important life dimensions.
For many high school students struggling with the decision about whether to go to college, Michael offers some intriguing information. Drawing on a dataset on the level of schooling attained by the young people’s fathers, he shows that of those with fathers who did not earn a high school diploma, only 7% graduated from college. Of those whose fathers obtained a bachelor or advanced degree, 54% graduated from college. While the data show that children whose fathers had more schooling received more education themselves, it didn’t always result in them to going to college. Other factors may play a role.
Nevertheless, from the 7% of kids whose fathers didn’t graduate from high school who ended up going to college we know that it is possible to move the dial and choose another path. On the other hand, from the 46% of kids with fathers who went to college but did not end up going themselves, it’s clear that things can also go in the opposite direction. As Michael says, “People have a choice – it’s not predetermined. What you do and what you choose matters – and matters a lot, whatever your father’s schooling level.”
So what will your choices be? In what ways can you move the dial forward? How will you decide what to do when faced with these five life decisions?