Red Shirting the Boys?

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When you're five, if there's an 11 month difference between you and one of the other players, that's huge. A year older when they hit high school, which means they are a year bigger when they're on the playing field. And in basketball and football and sockerance, that can make quite a big difference, especially for boys. But where i think gladwll was wrong is in the suggestion that that relative age effect,. like within your class, has a big academic result. It's actually much more your absolute age that affects your academics.

Shermer and Reeves discuss: • comparison method: U.S. vs. other WERID countries • education • work/labor market • family • marriage • Divorce/custody/spousal support/child support • intersectionality I: Black boys and men vs. White boys and men • intersectionality II: poor boys and men vs. middle class/upper class boys and men • What is a man? (nature and nurture in the making of a male) • what the political left gets wrong about boys and men • what the political right gets wrong about boys and men • solutions: red shirt boys early; men in STEM and HEAL • fatherhood as an independent institution

Richard V. Reeves is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the Boys and Men Project and holds the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair. He is the author of Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It(2017) and a regular contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic.