The boys are not all right. That’s the message from a new Centre for Social Justice report, Lost Boys, published last week. It surveys how boys and young men are faring in Britain and finds that in several areas there is now a reverse gender gap, with boys, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, struggling to keep up with girls.
When it comes to education, girls outperform boys at GCSEs and A-levels, and the ratio of women to men at university is 60:40. Boys are more than twice as likely to be excluded from school, with rates of exclusion particularly high for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is all feeding through into labour market outcomes: in the 00s, women aged 16-24 were more likely to be not in employment, education and training than young men; in recent years, that has flipped, with young men also significantly more likely to be unemployed than young women. The pay gap for young people has also become a more complex story: for 21- to 24-year-olds, median earnings are now higher for women, but this has been driven by a stark drop in earnings for non-graduate young men, with graduates still earning more than their female equivalent. What’s more, boys are more likely to be obese than girls, and rates of suicide are three and a half times higher for boys aged 15-19 than girls of the same age.
