(June 2017) The level of well-being of young American women (ages 16 to 34) rose significantly for members of the Baby Boom generation but hit a wall for women in subsequent generations, the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) concludes in a new report.  In its latest Population Bulletin, “Losing Ground: Young Women’s Well-Being Across Generations in the United States,” PRB analysts present a comprehensive new Index of Young Women’s Well-Being to show how social and structural barriers to progress for young women in Generation X and the Millennial generation have contributed to women’s persistently high poverty rates, a declining share of women in high-wage/high-tech jobs, a dramatic rise in women’s incarceration rates, and increases in maternal mortality and women’s suicide…

Momentum has stalled or reversed on several key measures of well-being:

• The proportion of women ages 30 to 34 living in poverty increased to about 17 percent for the Millennial generation from about 12 percent for Generation X.
• Young women in Generation X faced higher rates of maternal mortality than women of the Baby Boom, and rates are even higher for Millennial women.
• About 1 in 4 workers in high-paying STEM occupations (jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields) were women in Generation X, but this has fallen to 1 in 5 for Millennials.
• The suicide rate for young women in the Millennial generation increased to 6.3 per 100,000 from 4.4 per 100,000 in Generation X.
• Women’s incarceration rates have grown 10-fold between the World War II generation and Millennial generation…”