Generation Unbound

Over half of all births to young adults in the United States today occur outside of marriage, and most are unplanned. This trend is driving a growing class divide. At the top are planners, who are marrying and having children only after establishing a career. At the bottom-and increasingly in the middle-are drifters, who are having unplanned children early, outside of marriage, and without the stable support of a second parent. This divide is contributing to rising inequality and decreased social mobility for both young parents andtheir children.The political right calls for a return to traditional marriage; the left proposes more social programs to help less advantaged families. InGeneration Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a provocative third approach: turning drifters into planners and thereby ensuring that morechildren are born into families with the means and motivation to care for them-and saving billions of dollars in social costs.How do we make this shift? Drawing on behavioral economics, Sawhill offers recommendations for preventing unplanned pregnancy among young adults-for example, by offering greater access to long-acting reversible contraception (such as IUDs) to helpstem the tide of children born to parents who are unprepared for the financial and social responsibilities of raising a child.