美国男孩问题与经济困境密不可分

The behavior gap between rich and poor children, starting at very early ages, is now a well-known piece of social science. Entering kindergarten, high-income children not only know more words and can read better than poorer children but they also have longer attention spans, better-controlled tempers and more sensitivity to other children.
从很小的时候，富孩子和穷孩子就出现了行为差距。在这方面，一篇相关的社会科学论文现已变得众所周知。走进幼儿园，你会发现富孩子不仅比穷孩子认识更多的字，阅读能力更强，而且拥有更长的注意力周期，能够更好地控制脾气，对其他孩子更加敏感。

All of which makes the comparisons between boys and girls in the same categories fairly striking: The gap in behavioral skills between young girls and boys is even bigger than the gap between rich and poor.
所有这一切使得同一个类别中男孩和女孩的比较更加引人注目：小女孩和小男孩的行为技能差异甚至比富孩子和穷孩子的差异还要大。

By kindergarten, girls are substantially more attentive, better behaved, more sensitive, more persistent, more flexible and more independent than boys, according to a new paper from Third Way, a Washington research group. The gap grows over the course of elementary school and feeds into academic gaps between the sexes. By eighth grade, 48 percent of girls receive a mix of A’s and B’s or better. Only 31 percent of boys do.
华盛顿研究机构第三条道路(Third Way)最新发布的一份研究报告显示，上幼儿园时，女孩比男孩更加专心，更守规矩，更具韧性，更加灵活和独立。这种差异在小学期间进一步扩大，加大了两性之间的成绩差距。到了八年级，48%的女孩获得A和B，甚或更好的成绩组合。只有31%的男孩能够获得这样的成绩。

And in an economy that rewards knowledge, the academic struggles of boys turn into economic struggles. Men’s wages are stagnating. Men are much more likely to be idle — neither working, looking for work nor caring for family — than they once were and much more likely to be idle than women.
在这样一个奖励知识的经济体中，男孩的学业困境往往会转化为经济困境。男性的工资正陷于停滞。与往昔相比，男性现在更有可能无所事事——既没有工作可做，也不找工作和照顾家人。他们无事可做的可能性也要远远大于女性。

We reported last week that the United States had lost its once-enormous global lead in middle-class pay, based on international income surveys over the last three decades. After-tax median income in Canada appears to have been higher last year than the same measure in this country. The poor in Canada and much of western Europe earn more than the poor here.
我们此前的报道说，针对过去30年的国际收入调查显示，在全球范围内，美国中产阶级的薪酬已经失去了昔日的巨大领先优势。加拿大去年的税后收入中位数似乎高于美国。加拿大和西欧许多国家的穷人要比美国穷人挣得更多。

These depressing trends have many causes, but the social struggles of men and boys are an important one. If the United States is going to build a better-functioning economy than the one we’ve had over the last 15 years, we’re going to have to solve our boy problems.
这些令人沮丧的趋势是由多种原因导致的，但男性和男孩的社会困境是其中重要一环。如果美国打算建立一种比过去15年运行得更好的经济，我们就必须解决美国男孩的问题。

To put it another way, the American economy — for all its troubles (and all of the lingering sexism) — looks to be doing pretty well when you focus on girls. The portion of women earning a four-year college degree has jumped more than 75 percent over the last quarter-century, in line with what has happened in other rich countries. Median inflation-adjusted female earnings are up almost 35 percent over the same span, census data show — while male earnings, incredibly, haven’t risen at all.
从另一个角度说，如果只关注女孩，你就会发现美国经济的表现看起来相当不错，尽管它面临种种麻烦，以及挥之不去的性别歧视问题。一如其他富裕国家，在过去25年中，获得四年制大学学位的女性人数飙涨了75%以上。人口普查数据显示，剔除通胀因素后的女性收入中位数在同一时期上涨了约35%。而令人难以置信的是，男性收入根本就没有增长。

“We know we’ve got a crisis, and the crisis is with boys,” said Elaine Kamarck, a resident scholar at Third Way and a former Clinton administration official. “We’re not quite sure why it’s happening.”
“我们知道我们面临着一场危机，这场危机发生在男孩身上，”第三条道路常驻学者，前克林顿政府官员伊莱恩·卡马克(Elaine Kamarck)说。“我们不太明白为什么会发生这种事。”

Two of the leading theories involve single-parent families and schools. The number of single-parent families has surged over the last generation, and the effect seems to be larger on boys in those families than girls. Girls who grow up with only one parent — typically a mother — fare almost as well on average as girls with two parents. Boys don’t.
两个主要理论涉及单亲家庭和学校。在过去一代人的时间里，单亲家庭数量急剧增长。在这类家庭中，男孩受到的负面影响似乎大于女孩。平均而言，单亲（通常是一个母亲）家庭女孩的学业表现几乎跟双亲家庭女孩一样好。而男孩做不到这一点。

But the trends seem too broad for family structure to be the only cause. That’s where schools come in.
但这些趋势似乎过于广泛，以至于家庭结构不可能是唯一原因。所以还需要探讨学校教育因素。

Girls enter school with a lead on boys, and schools then fail to close the gaps. Instead, they increase. The behavioral advantage that girls have over boys in kindergarten, based on teachers’ assessments of their students, are even larger in fifth grade.
进入学校时，女孩的素质本就高于男生，但在上学期间，这种差距不仅没有消失，反而变大了。根据教师对学生的评估，到五年级时，女孩在幼儿园期间相对于男孩的行为优势进一步增大。

By then, the average girl is at the 60th percentile of an index of social and behavioral skills, while the average boy is at only the 40th percentile, according to Claudia Buchmann of Ohio State and Thomas DiPrete of Columbia, the authors of the new paper. That gap of 20 percentage points is larger than the 14-point gap between poor and not poor children or the 15-point gap between white and black children.
俄亥俄州立大学(Ohio State)的克劳迪娅·布赫曼(Claudia Buchmann)和哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)的托马斯·迪普雷特(Thomas DiPrete)最新发布的论文显示，到这时候，女孩通常处于一个社交和行为技能指数的第60百分位，而男孩通常只处于第40百分位。20个百分点的差距不仅大于穷孩子和富孩子的差距（14个百分点），也大于白人小孩和黑人小孩的差距（15个百分点）。