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News Analysis

Men Need Help. Is Hillary Clinton the Answer?

Credit...Javier Jaén

If Hillary Clinton wins this election and becomes the first female president of the United States, American men may well be one of her most urgent problems.

Consider some startling statistics.

More than a fifth of American men — about 20 million people — between 20 and 65 had no paid work last year.

Seven million men between 25 and 55 are no longer even looking for work, twice as many black men as white.

There are 20 million men with felony records who are not in jail, with dim prospects of employment, and more of these are black men.

Half the men not in the labor force report they are in bad physical or mental health.

Men account for only 42 percent of college graduates, handicapping them in a job market that rewards higher levels of education.

Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and now a professor of economics at Harvard, estimates that a third of men between 25 and 54 without college educations could be out of work by midcentury.

Well-paying jobs that don’t demand a college degree have been shrinking for generations — and technology is accelerating that trend. Driverless cars, for instance, could eliminate trucking as we know it, a refuge for many blue-collar men.

The crisis is not confined to the white men backing Donald J. Trump, who has commanding majorities among men without college educations. The challenge of masculinity in America extends beyond race and political party.

Economists and scholars have assembled a trove of disturbing data about the plight of men, even as they acknowledge that women’s employment has stalled for the past 15 years as well.

Nicholas N. Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has released the latest compendium, “Men Without Work.” Drawing on multiple data sets, he sketches an unsettling portrait not just of male unemployment, but also of lives deeply alienated from civil society. The seven million men who are not even looking for work — about 60 percent of whom do not have four-year college degrees — spent an average of five and a half hours a day watching television or movies. Very few cared for children or other household members, or did housework. A third admitted to illegal drug use.

Many of Mr. Trump’s backers talk about losing out in the new economy, echoing the points the candidate makes on the campaign trail.

Joe Peterson and Al Paslow, 61 years old and friends since high school, waited for hours the other day to attend a Trump rally in Ambridge, Pa. — a town named for the American Bridge Company. It was a resonant spot, in the heart of what was once a thriving steel and energy powerhouse. Mr. Paslow’s mother grew up in Ambridge on the very street where the rally took place. Their family, friends and relatives all worked in the abundant steel mills in the Pittsburgh area — Mr. Peterson’s father as an electrician, Mr. Paslow’s father as a blacksmith.

“Now these mills are gone, replaced by stores, shops and offices that could have been placed almost anywhere,” Mr. Paslow said. “No industry here now; it’s all been lost.”

The two friends most recently worked as independent contractors in the oil and gas industry, earning six-figure salaries. Mr. Peterson had a high school education; Mr. Paslow a college degree. Last year, they were both laid off — no severance or unemployment, because they were not technically employees.

“I worked for the oil industry, which is dead because of Hillary,” Mr. Peterson said. Now, he said, he was “considered nothing.” He is worried about whether his son will find work; both friends fear that they may never get a job again.

The friends were thrilled that Mr. Trump promised at the rally to bring the oil and gas industry back on his very first day in office. “Unbelievably, that was exactly what we wanted to hear,” Mr. Paslow said. “Our hearts were uplifted.”

More than economic loss, though, support for Mr. Trump appears to come from men who live in places where intergenerational mobility is low and who report worries about their finances, whatever their level of income, according to Jonathan Rothwell, a senior economist at Gallup who analyzed 106,000 interviews conducted over the past year.

Add to economic anxiety a spate of illness and disability. American men — particularly men without a college degree — are simply less healthy than women.

Alan B. Krueger, a professor of economics at Princeton, recently conducted a study of working-age men. “I came away thinking our biggest social problem is men,” he said.

A huge number are on painkillers, including 43.5 percent of men who have stopped looking for work. Both physical and emotional pain — sadness, stress and dissatisfaction with their lives — were particularly acute among men without college degrees, the unemployed and those not looking for work.

On several measures of health, men fare worse than women, and black men fare worse than white men. Black men die at higher rates than white men from AIDS, heart disease, cancer and homicide.

Yet the gaps are growing smaller by gender and race, and bigger by income and education. A man born in 1950, who is now in the lowest 10 percent of household earnings, can expect to live 14 fewer years than a man in the top 10 percent, according to a Brookings Institution study. Smoking, the largest preventable cause of death, is more prevalent among lower-income and less-well-educated people, and accounted for a third to a fifth of the gap in life expectancy between men with college degrees and men with high school diplomas, according to Andrew Fenelon of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Jessica Ho of Duke University.

Poor health makes it harder to work. Mr. Krueger found that 11.5 percent of men who were not employed cited illness and disability as a factor. Mr. Eberstadt’s analysis found that nearly two-thirds of American households where men were not in the labor force reported receiving money from at least one disability program in 2013.

American men are also far more likely than women to be in jail or to be convicted of a felony, compounding the difficulty of finding work. The government keeps almost no data on the 20 million men who are not in prison but have felony convictions. Mr. Eberstadt estimates that for men with a criminal record between 45 and 54, the odds of being out of the work force are 35 percent for white males and 40 percent for black males.

A segment of American men feel under cultural as well as economic assault.

Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Labor’s Love Lost: Rise and Fall of the Working Class Family in America,” directly links economic upheaval to the loss of masculinity. “It’s much more difficult now to say, I’m a real man,” he said. “A real man earns enough so his wife doesn’t have to work.”

Most economists, though, don’t believe it’s possible to go back to the days when manufacturing was king — and few women would want to give up economic or societal power, either. So what could help American men?

Many of the policies aimed at spurring economic growth and supporting low-wage workers would assist American men without college educations in particular.

In the short term, liberal economists and even some conservative ones back an idea that Mrs. Clinton has said she would push in her first 100 days — a $275 billion infrastructure jobs plan, which could provide at least temporary employment to a key segment of those hurting the most: blue-collar men.

Liberal economists tend to coalesce around other solutions, such as raising the minimum wage and expanding eligibility for the earned-income tax credit, a proven way to reduce poverty. Mr. Summers is one of many who would push the Federal Reserve to continue stimulating the economy to boost employment, rather than focusing on curbing inflation. He also argues for government subsidies to bolster the wages of less-skilled employees.

Wage insurance could address the plight of men like Mr. Paslow; as Mr. Krueger explains it, payroll taxes could be used to make up some of the gap between the higher hourly wages earned in manufacturing and the lower wages more common in the service industry.

Liberal and conservative economists agree on the failings of the education system and urge more focus on the school-to-work transition, since so many men without a college education are flailing.

Apprenticeship systems and expanded access to community colleges — both ideas backed by President Obama — could help train workers for high-demand jobs without requiring four-year colleges, Mr. Cherlin said. But conservatives worry about the cost of subsidizing community colleges.

Mr. Summers would like to see more government investment in areas with bad school systems, but conservatives prize local control.

Re-examining the effects of mass incarceration — on black men in particular — and reconsidering mandatory sentences have attracted bipartisan support, though such efforts stalled in Congress. Mr. Summers calls for improving incarceration-to-work programs.

While debate continues to rage about Obamacare, Mr. Krueger is convinced that expanding health insurance could provide American men with more preventive treatments and promote healthier lifestyles.

But in the long term, Isabel V. Sawhill and Richard V. Reeves, senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, argue that men must resign themselves to working in “pink collar jobs” — those known by the acronym HEAL, for health, education, administration and literacy.

Economically, “women have adjusted better than men,” Ms. Sawhill said. “They’re the ones who are winning.” Women dominate the (often lower-paying) service jobs that are the backbone of the new economy. Men make up just 20 percent of elementary and middle-school teachers, 9 percent of nurses, 16 percent of personal aides and 6 percent of personal assistants, Ms. Sawhill and Mr. Reeves noted.

Succeeding in the new economy and culture may well require rethinking conventional ideas about masculinity. Mr. Cherlin bemoans men’s “continued reluctance to take jobs they think are beneath the dignity of real men.”

From the conservative end of the spectrum, Mr. Eberstadt flags the disability system. He’d like to see it redefined as a “work first” program, much like welfare reform under Bill Clinton. He cites a Swedish program that ties disability benefits to showing up for job training and job placement.

Mr. Eberstadt would also like to intensify social pressure on the cadre of men who have stopped looking for work. “Why haven’t we had the same sort of conversation about stigmatizing or shaming unworking men that we had 20 years ago about mothers on welfare?” he said. “They were not idle; they had little kids.”

If she wins, focusing on American men could pay off for Mrs. Clinton. She could shore up support with traditional Democratic voters such as African-American men. Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic Party have lost considerable ground with a constituency they used to own, blue-collar men. Angry white men are not likely to trust Mrs. Clinton, Beltway politicians or the political system. But they will need their help.

Susan Chira (@susanchira) is a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues for The New York Times. Join her on Facebook.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Men Need Help. Is Hillary Clinton the Answer?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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