Richard V. Reeves > Quotes

“Disagreement is one thing; disrespect is quite another.”
― Richard V. Reeves

“This obsession with the upper class allows the upper middle class to convince ourselves we are in the same boat as the rest of America; but it is not true.5”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“The American dream, according to Adams, is “a dream of being able to grow to the fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations … for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being.”21”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“When we hoard opportunities, we help our own children but hurt others by reducing their chances of securing those opportunities. Every college place or internship that goes to one of our kids because of a legacy bias or personal connection is one less available to others. We may prefer not to dwell on the unfairness here, but that’s simply a moral failing on our part. Too many upper middle-class Americans still insist that their success, or the success of their children, stems entirely from brilliance and tenacity; “born on third base, thinking they hit a triple,” in football coach Barry Switzer’s vivid phrase.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“The American dream is not dead; but it is being hoarded by those of us in the upper middle class. The question is: Will we share it?”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“women who have achieved the greatest degree of economic independence, with high levels of education and earning potential, are the ones who are now most likely to get married and stay married. I don’t think Gloria Steinem or anyone else thought that this was how things would unfold. Even she eventually got married, at the age of 66, explaining, “We are at an age when marriage can be chosen and not expected.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“The problem we face is not just class separation, but class perpetuation. There are two factors driving class perpetuation at the top: the unequal development of “market merit” and some unfair “opportunity hoarding.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“First, motivation: “The women are so driven. They know they have to provide for their family.” Second, independence: “They [the women] don’t really need a relationship, they can do it on their own.” Third, persistence: “When stuff gets hard, the guys tend to run away, the girls don’t.” Fourth, planning: “Women tend to live in the future, men tend to live in the present.” Put these together—motivation, independence, persistence, and planning—and it is no wonder, to Tyreese at least, that women are doing better in school.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Highly educated Americans are not just more likely to be married: they are more likely to be married to each other.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“Biology does represent the foundation of our personalities and behavioral tendencies,” writes Louann Brizendine in her book, The Female Brain. “If in the name of free will—and political correctness—we try to deny the influence of biology on the brain, we begin fighting our own nature. If we acknowledge that our biology is influenced by other factors … we can prevent it from creating a fixed reality by which we are ruled.”4”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Americans are more tolerant of income inequality than the citizens of other countries, in part because of this faith that in each generation the poor run a fair race against the rich, and the brightest succeed. Americans”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“the real problem in American higher education is not about debt, but distribution and quality. The debt problem is for people from poorer backgrounds who borrow to attend bad colleges.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“Far from abandoning marriage, college-educated Americans are busily rehabilitating the institution for the modern age, turning it into a child-rearing machine for a knowledge economy.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
― Richard V. Reeves, All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated

“Is your child a dandelion or an orchid? An odd question, I know, but psychologists use these terms to distinguish between children who are pretty resilient, mostly able to cope with adversity and stress (dandelions), and those who are more sensitive to their conditions (orchids).57 If things are just right, orchids will really bloom. If not, they will suffer.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Class is not just about how we make our living or where we live. It is also about how we live.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“Right now, there is something of a culture of entitlement among America’s upper middle class. Partly this is because of a natural tendency to compare ourselves to those even better off than us. This is the “we are the 99 percent” problem. But it is also because we feel entitled to our position since it results from our own merit: our education, brains, and hard work.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“And here is the difficult part. However messily it is expressed, much of the criticism of our class is true. We proclaim the “net” benefits of free trade, technological advances, and immigration, safe in the knowledge that we will be among the beneficiaries. Equipped with high levels of human capital, we can flourish in a global economy. The cities we live in are zoned to protect our wealth, but deter the unskilled from sharing in it. Professional licensing and an immigration policy tilted toward the low-skilled shield us from the intense market competition faced by those in nonprofessional occupations. We proclaim the benefits of free markets but are largely insulated from the risks they can pose. Small wonder other folks can get angry.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“For men who are in work, pay levels are typically lower than in the past. The median real hourly wage for men peaked sometime in the 1970s and has been falling since. While women’s wages have risen across the board over the last four decades, wages for men on most rungs of the earnings ladder have stagnated. Only men at the top have seen strong earnings growth. Men who entered the workforce in 1983 will earn about 10% less, in real terms, across their working life than those who started out in 1967. For women, by contrast, life-time earnings have risen by 33% over the same period (these numbers are at the median).23 In the dry words of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “The long-term trend in men’s earnings has been quite different than that for women.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“One thing that did seem to influence men’s decision whether to study abroad was “peer interactions,” but in a negative direction.36 Men appear to motivate each other to stay put, rather than hit the road.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Wifeless men, by contrast, are often a mess. Compared to married men, their health is worse, their employment rates are lower, and their social networks are weaker. Drug-related deaths among never-married men more than doubled in a decade from 2010. Divorce, now twice as likely to be initiated by wives as husbands, is psychologically harder on men than women. One of the great revelations of feminism may turn out to be that men need women more than women need men. Wives were economically dependent on their husbands, but men were emotionally dependent on their wives. For all their jokes about the ball and chain, many men seem to know this. In a 2016 poll, more men than women ranked being married, either now or in the future, as “very important to me” (58 v. 47%). Men do not want to be ships without sails.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It

“These cultural variations matter a lot for how, and how far, natural tendencies are expressed in behavior. Culture and biology do not develop separately from each other. They coevolve. Neither biology nor culture can provide the whole story. But understanding the role of biology is necessary for keeping it in its place.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Young women are seizing opportunities with much greater zeal than young men. Take studying abroad as another example. In recent decades, this has become much more popular (at least until the pandemic) with increasing numbers of undergraduates now grabbing their passports and phrase books and heading overseas, most often to Europe.32 And why not? Going to another country for a few months is a great opportunity.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“What is driving the economic separation of the upper middle class? Short answer: wages and wives. Wages at the top have risen as a result of increased returns to human capital. Meanwhile, well-educated women have joined well-educated men at the top of the earnings ladder—and married them.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“Among women, the Fort Worth initiative “tripled associate degree completion.”7 This is a huge finding. But as with free college in Kalamazoo, it had no impact on college completion for male students. Why? Again, the evaluators can only speculate. James Sullivan, one of the scholars who is examining the program, says, “We don’t know.”8 That phrase again. His research team does note that the case managers assigned to work with students, called “navigators” (great name by the way), were all women. When a program relies heavily on a close one-to-one relationship, matching the gender of the provider and recipient may be important. This is consistent with research showing that when the racial or gender identities of teachers and learners or mentors and mentees match, results are often better.9”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Last but not least, boys suffer more from family instability, especially from the exit of biological fathers.65 Boys raised by single parents, especially single mothers, have worse outcomes than girls (including their own sisters) at school and lower rates of college enrollment, in part because of bigger differences in behavioral problems in the classroom.66 “Boys do especially poorly in broken families,” write Marianne Bertrand and Jessica Pan.67 Boys also benefit much more than girls from successful placement into a foster family, rather than remaining in a group home, according to an analysis by Stanford’s Cameron Taylor.68”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“all else equal, an all-female four-year school would have a graduation rate 14 percentage points higher than an all-male school.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Postsecondary education in particular has become an “inequality machine.”16 As more ordinary people have earned college degrees, upper middle-class families have simply upped the ante. Postgraduate qualifications are now the key to maintaining upper middle-class status.17 The upper middle class gains most of its status not by exploiting others but by exploiting its own skills.”
― Richard V. Reeves, 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

“Class warriors downplay gender concerns, focused only on the oligarchy. Gender warriors downplay class concerns, focused only on the patriarchy. But inequalities of class and gender have to be considered together, especially when they pull in different directions. “Policymaking is not a zero-sum game in which you have to choose between caring about female disadvantage or the socio-economic gap or male underachievement,” write Nick Hillman and Nicholas Robinson. “All three matter.”5 Focusing too narrowly on the remaining barriers facing women can distract attention from the much deeper class divides that have opened up in our society. We might lean in, but fail to look down.”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It

“Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling,”
― Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It