Good question. Not really sure. Could be some displacement by women entering the workforce. Could be the decline of manufacturing and agriculture and the move towards more service industry. What are your thoughts?
Certainly gender demographics are a large part of it as women entered the workforce. I read something along the lines of when the wife works the husband underperforms relative to a husband whose wife doesn’t work.
I suspect it is the combination of three major trends: women’s participation rates rising, the ability to not work (welfare, unemployment, etc.) and an aging population in which retirement comes earlier driven not just by age. Think of an 18-19 year old twenty five years ago getting a government job.
Today he’s in his forties or early fifties and better take his pension while he can. At the same time, someone who has invested decently over the last 25-35 years has had a very good run. If your house is paid off, you can retire without a lot of overhead. Looking at your graphs with the naked eye. That’s how it looks to me.
The recession is concentrated in certain sectors dragging the whole economy down with it. RE is a big problem and touches a lot of other industries.
I suspect that SSDI is a major driver. Very interesting discussion of it and its enormous growth over recent years:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.html