Beyond "Failure to Launch" — What the Data Reveals About Young Adult Struggles
By Annie Elliott, Senior Data Analyst at Metopio, and Heather Blonsky, Vice President of Data at Metopio
Why Young Adulthood Deserves a Closer Look
"I think young people in our world right now are in a really difficult space," says Annie Elliott, Senior Data Analyst at Metopio, in a recent Data Chats episode exploring the financial and health challenges facing young adults.
It's a sentiment that challenges the common narrative of "failure to launch" (the idea that young people are simply taking longer to grow up). But when Elliott and Heather Blonsky, Vice President of Data at Metopio, dug into the data, they found something different: young adults aren't failing. They're up against systemic barriers that previous generations didn't face at the same scale.
"I once did some work on extended adolescence," Elliott explains. "In generations past, young people would be considered a full adult by the time they're around 20 — they'd get married at 22, have babies, it all happened in the early 20s. Now, that's not what we see."
Let’s use data to understand why.
The Poverty Problem: Young Adults Are Struggling Most
When Elliott pulled up poverty rates by age group in Mississippi, a clear pattern emerged: 18- to 39-year-olds consistently show the highest poverty rates of any age group.
While the 40-64 age group and those 65 and older hover around 14% poverty, young adults are struggling at rates closer to the state average — and when you factor in children (many of whom have young adult parents), you're looking at an entire demographic cohort bearing the heaviest economic burden.
"We've heard before that this is a generation who is not doing better than their parents," Blonsky notes. "And here we have it in the data."
For public health departments and hospitals working on Community Health Assessments, this age stratification reveals a critical insight: poverty isn't evenly distributed across age groups, and young adults need targeted support.
The Employment Barrier: 13% Unemployment for Those Actively Looking
So why are poverty rates so high? One major factor is unemployment.
For 16- to 24-year-olds actively seeking work, unemployment rates reach 13% in many areas. And as Blonsky points out, "These are teenagers who are looking for jobs — not the ones who are in school all the time, not the ones who are only doing college. They're actively trying to be employed, and they're not."
“And this doesn't even account for the group of people who have just stopped looking entirely," adds Elliott.
The acronym NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) captures this group of young people who have essentially dropped out of the labor force.
When Generational Wealth Makes All the Difference
For young adults who do have cars (essential for getting to work in much of the country), keeping up with payments is a struggle. In some areas, nearly 10% of 18- to 24-year-olds are delinquent on auto loans or retail debt.
And here's where generational wealth becomes critical — but Blonsky is quick to clarify what that means.
"When we say generational wealth, it's tempting to think, oh, somebody with a trust fund, somebody with a million dollars. And of course they count. But it also counts somebody whose grandmother can give them a car, even if it's a crummy beater. Somebody whose parents can help with college or a missed car payment. That's also generational wealth."
Without that safety net, that 13% unemployment rate hits completely differently.
Student Loans and How Geographic Patterns Tell a Story
For those who went to college, student debt adds another layer of financial pressure. Metopio's data from Opportunity Atlas reveals striking geographic patterns.
"Look at these areas with the highest student loan balances," Elliott says, pointing to counties across Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. "That's our generational wealth. Those parents are unable to help with the student loan balance — or pay for college in the first place."
The same counties show up again on the student loan delinquency map. When you're juggling rent, a car payment, student loans, and trying to afford groceries on an entry-level salary (or unemployment), something has to give.
The Health Insurance Gap
Young adults also face some of the highest uninsured rates in the country — and you can see state lines clearly on the map, reflecting Medicaid eligibility differences and job-based coverage availability.
"We sometimes think of them as a population that thinks they're invincible, willing to tolerate risk," Elliott says. "But I'd also like to frame this around the financial restrictions of getting health insurance, particularly if you're young and don't have the sort of job that provides it for you."
The long-term health implications are serious.
"If you think about it, they are sort of invincible — they're probably not at the point where chronic diseases have really shown up in a serious way," Blonsky explains. "But things could be heading that way. They have risk factors, maybe slightly high blood pressure or blood sugar that's a little higher than we'd like, but if they're not getting primary care and they don't have the resources to maintain health at this point, it's not magically going to get better."
These are the people who could eventually have complications from diabetes or hypertension that will become very expensive and disabling conditions in the next 20 years.
And there's another critical consideration: "A lot of these people are moms, too," Blonsky adds. "If you go into a pregnancy in even slightly worse condition, it's going to be a harder 9 months than it needed to be."
Reframing "Failure to Launch"
"We talk about failure to launch, and that's a term we see in the media. I hear a lot of people saying their kid has failed to launch," Elliott says. "I'd really like to reframe that as: it's not a weakness on the part of these young people; it's not always laziness. They are up against all these societal roadblocks — health insurance, jobs, all the debt, student loans. It's harder to launch!"
Blonsky agrees: "And it really does come out in their health. When we get back to this as a public health topic, with maternal child health, what the next 20 years will look like, and what we could be doing about it now... the truth is the entire system is going to be affected by how many people have chronic diseases."
What This Means for Community Health Planning
When public health departments and hospitals are developing Community Health Assessments or Community Health Improvement Plans, these age-stratified indicators reveal critical intervention points:
Where young adults are most economically vulnerable (poverty and unemployment data)
Which communities lack the generational wealth safety net (student loan balances, auto loan delinquency, median net worth)
Where health outcomes are at risk (uninsured rates, setting the stage for chronic disease)
How maternal and child health will be affected in the coming years
The data shows that young adult struggles aren't always about individual failings — they're about structural barriers that demand structural solutions.