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'Accordion' Families Expand for Boomerang Kids, 'Parasite Singles' to Move Home - YouTube
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bjbjLULU GWEN IFILL: Now, young adults who
leave the nest, only to come right back home
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again.
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NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman
looks at what is behind that growing trend.
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It's part of his regular reporting Making
Sense of financial news.
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PAUL SOLMAN: The Schaffer residence in Newton,
Massachusetts, outside Boston.
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Fraternal twins Becky and Naomi both went
away to college in Canada, graduated last
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year.
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Both worked part-time.
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And both are so-called boomerang kids, back
home with their parents.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN, author, "The Accordion Family":
Can you tell us a little bit about what your
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high school friends are doing now?
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Are many of them back in Newton as well?
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BECKY SCHAFFER, college graduate: Yes.
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Most of them are.
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I would say that only one of our high school
friends, or two -- one or two of them have
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really gotten good full-time jobs.
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PAUL SOLMAN: The fifth person in the Schaffers'
kitchen?
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Sociologist and Johns Hopkins Dean Katherine
Newman, demonstrating her field work skills.
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NAOMI SCHAFFER, college graduate: I didn't
want to move somewhere random.
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BECKY SCHAFFER: I kind of wish I did it, not
that I don't have living at home, but . . . KATHERINE
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NEWMAN: Why do you say that?
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BECKY SCHAFFER: I just feel like, when I first
moved home, I was like OK, Becky, like, six
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months, and then you're, like, not going to
here anymore, you're going to move out.
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And I feel like I'm getting a little bit complacent.
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PAUL SOLMAN: The Schaffers could have sprung
straight from Newman's new book, "The Accordion
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Family," which chronicles a worldwide trend
that is reversing what we used to think normal.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: In my generation, if you
didn't leave home at 18, there was something
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really wrong with you.
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This phenomenon of young people either boomeranging
back or never leaving has grown like topsy.
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PAUL SOLMAN: What exactly is an accordion
family?
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: An accordion family -- the
reason I use the accordion term is to capture
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this sense of expansion and contraction, that
the family is not a stable group.
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It's sort of moving in and out.
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But primarily, I mean multigenerational households
with working or non-working young adults and
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their parents.
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PAUL SOLMAN: So, the accordion is being pulled
out.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: It's being pulled out, and
especially it's being pulled in the younger
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direction.
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We have had accordion families of a different
kind in the past that stretch to incorporate
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the older generation.
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PAUL SOLMAN: My grandfather lived with our
family when I was a kid.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: Right.
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That is less the case now.
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So the accordion is stretching in the other
direction.
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And when you tie that together with the recession,
which is making everyone so anxious about
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the economic future of rising generations,
it's a recipe for panic in many cultures.
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PAUL SOLMAN: The culture most alarmed, Japan's,
which calls its boomerang kids parasite singles.
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The one featured in this TV show looks like
he's pushing middle age.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: In Japan, it is provoking
really almost hysterical reactions.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Why?
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: Well, because the Japanese
view is that this is indicative of a damaged
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generation that's not taking its place, its
orderly, correct place in the trajectory of
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life in Japan.
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When you ask, why are your children at home,
what you get is a highly moralistic explanation.
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It's all about how these kids these days,
they're not behaving properly.
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They have rejected our way of life.
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They don't seem to know how to grow up.
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PAUL SOLMAN: No wonder there is such falling
birth rates in these places.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: Right, below replacement
fertility.
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The same is true in Spain and Italy.
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So all the countries where you have these
accordion families are countries in which
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the birth rates have fallen through the floorboards.
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PAUL SOLMAN: I actually stayed with an accordion
family on a reporting trip to Spain in 2010.
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High youth unemployment meant that more than
half of all 20- and 30-somethings were back
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home, including the son of my friend journalist
Jose Antonio Soler.
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Daughter Andrea, visiting her folks with some
friends, explained.
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ANDREA MARTINEZ WESTLEY, daughter: Most of
our friends live in their parents' houses
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because they can't pay rent.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Like your brother, living here.
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ANDREA MARTINEZ WESTLEY: Yes, like my brother.
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Like his brothers -- he has four brothers.
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And three of them are still living with his
parents, which his oldest brother is 32 and
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he's still living with his parents.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Unlike the Japanese, though,
Spaniards have an economic explanation for
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their generation: (SPEAKING SPANISH) neither
studying nor working.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: They will say, my child
is still at home because the government liberalized
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contracts, rubbish contracts.
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That's the phrase they would use, rubbish
contracts, that permitted short-term employment,
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part-time wages, and within less than a decade
a huge chunk of Spanish youth were found in
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those kinds of jobs, short-term, part-time.
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They couldn't earn enough money to own a home.
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And there's very little rental housing in
countries like Spain and Italy.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Newman's accordion family project
was actually launched in Italy when, in a
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conversation with a researcher there, Newman
first learned that attitudes toward boomerang
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boys (SPEAKING ITALIAN) are culture-specific.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: You know, we're just talking
about our families.
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What do your kids do?
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What do my kids do?
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And she said: "Well, my son, he is 35.
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And I clean his room every day.
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And I take care of his laundry."
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And I was trying to control my reaction and
say, gee, that's really interesting, rather
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than what I was thinking, which was, are you
crazy?
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(LAUGHTER) PAUL SOLMAN: And she's a professional,
I take it?
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: Just like me, exactly.
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And I said, "What's it like having your son
at home at 35?"
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And she said, "Well, why would he ever leave
me?"
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PAUL SOLMAN: So, in Italy, they're happy with
accordion families.
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With Spain, they're not so happy.
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Japan, they're really unhappy.
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So what's the American attitude towards accordion
families, boomerang kids?
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: Complicated, ambivalent.
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Our view of whether this is a problem depends
a lot on where we think these kids are headed.
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PAUL SOLMAN: But where they're headed these
days is impossible to predict.
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Evan Melillo had a B.A. in history as of June
2009.
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A job in town government, a town just north
of Cape Cod didn't pan out.
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So?
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EVAN MELILLO, college graduate: I went on
Craigslist and I looked up every tutoring,
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assistant teacher, sub, you know, anything
with even remotely -- I think I applied to
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a driving school.
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And so far, I got two e-mails back.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Making just $72 a week, he d
moved back home, where his older brother had
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lived for years.
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In December 2010, he found steady work as
a substitute teacher and is now also pursuing
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a graduate degree, all the while living at
home.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: If your children come home
and they're making tracks toward the future,
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then it seems like a very reasonable likelihood
that they're going to be fine.
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Then families feel quite comfortable about
it.
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But if it feels indefinite, if it's not clear
it's going to work out, if their plans don't
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materialize, that sets off a wave of anxiety
in American households.
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And we tend to make that nervousness rain
down on them in the form of persistent questions
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-- did you apply for jobs today, did you look
for that master's degree program, and try
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to negotiate very delicately some form of
parental encouragement.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Prod, a parental prod.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: There are some silver linings
to this.
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If your child is not leaving home, then you're
not becoming older.
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You might be biologically older, but, sociologically,
you're not.
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And when they're in your home, you don't treat
them the same way, the surveillance, the anxiety,
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all that nasty stuff they had to do when they
were teenagers.
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PAUL SOLMAN: At the Schaffers, parents Kenny
and Lianne were mostly positive about their
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no-longer empty nest.
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LIANNE SCHAFFER, mother: It's a pleasure really
to have them around, even though it's more
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work and more, you know, mess and all that.
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PAUL SOLMAN: The girls' take?
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BECKY SCHAFFER: Even though my parents are
cool, it's nice to live by yourself in an
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apartment and not kind of have to answer to
anyone.
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PAUL SOLMAN: You can't sleep until 2:00 in
the afternoon.
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BECKY SCHAFFER: Oh, I do that.
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But I can't -- like, you know, I can't sit
in my living room and drink with my friends
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until late into the night, like I did in college.
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And that's okay.
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But, I mean, this is like our family's home,
so I can't just do whatever I want.
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NAOMI SCHAFFER: I'm here indefinitely.
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PAUL SOLMAN: There is this notion that you
ought to be moving on in your life.
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NAOMI SCHAFFER: Yeah.
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However, seeing that the job market isn't
ideal, I'm not in a rush to find something
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to do to start my career.
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So, until I figure that out, I'm not going
to do anything drastic.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: You look across these countries,
and you see that everywhere where there used
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to be long-term employment, this has shifted
toward part-time contracts.
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It's easier to fire workers.
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The accordion family becomes the way in which
we step up and try to cure all of the ills
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of the marketplace.
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And we make the best of it.
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And I think we actually deserve some pat on
the back for doing so.
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It's an indication of the resilience of American
families that we do so.
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But it has its limits.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Both kids, or two of your three
kids back home?
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Would you prefer them to be living on their
own?
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KEN SCHAFFER, father: If you asked me the
same question in 10 years, yes, I might have
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a different answer.
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But, right now, I like having them home a
lot.
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KATHERINE NEWMAN: If this reaches 28, if this
reaches 30, and they still can't see their
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way to an independent future, I think we will
start to draw the line and really worry in
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very profound ways about where the country
is going.
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And in very many ways, I think that's exactly
where we are right now.
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We're not sure where we're going economically
and what the future will hold for the next
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generation.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Hey, who is sure about the future
these days?
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City GWEN IFILL: Now, young adults who leave
the nest, only to come right back home again
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