A shortage of young men in the workforce could weigh on housing, Social Security, and growth for years to come

Article here. Excerpt:

'It's a trend experts say will drag on the economy and could take years to fix, mainly because men have already been dropping out of the workforce for decades.

According to Carol Graham, a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institute, the labor force participation rate of prime working-age men has been declining over the last twenty years. Today, 10% of men aged 25-54 don't have a job and aren't looking for one, more than triple the percentage recorded in 1955, when just 3% were out of the workforce, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That amounts to around 7 million prime working-age men who aren't working — and has introduced a host of problems for the economy, leaving key industries understaffed and adding to the strain on government services and social safety nets, Graham and other experts told Business Insider.

"Some of them drop out [of college] and are just sort of forlorn and have no purpose or meaning in life. They're not very likely to be married. They're very likely to be living in their parent's basement," Graham said. "They're lonely, they're isolated."

The economic burden can also compound through generations, she added, given that men who have exited the workforce tend to be lower-income and are more likely to report mental and physical health problems, which impact their children's ability to build wealth.'