[Staff edit]. The fact that socio-economically disadvantaged men are getting left behind and lost [staff edit] comes from papers by the Population Research Institute, particularly the 2015 Family Barometer,
which explores childbearing intentions in Finland, and the Yearbook of Population Research including the Nordic Demographic Symposium papers.
The populist, nativist Finns Party, which briefly surged in the 2011 parliamentary election, is a centrist working class party and thus "steals" its support protest party-like from both traditional established "little people's/blue-collar" parties, the fellow centrist-populist agrarian Centre Party and the centre-left social democratic SDP. Not so from the centre-right liberal-conservative Coalition Party. We know who votes for the Finns: working-class blue-collar non-urban men with low education. Essentially, what we call the
peräkamarin pojat, literally the back bedroom boys, i.e. grownup men who still live in their mom's spare bedroom back in the woods. While all other parties are 50/50 men and women, the Finns Party stands out as a Man's Party, the last bastion. 50% of Finns Party supporters hail from traditional blue-collar jobs, as opposed to 46% for SDP and 43% for the socialist Left Party. More a workers' party than the traditional labour parties, but for males mainly.
So why are blue-collar males switching their identity from a working-class to right-wing populism and nationalist "True Finn"? Why the switch from the elite bankers/corporatists as a common enemy to "politicians" and "immigrants" and "leftists" and "liberals" and "progress" as the new enemy, us vs them?
Here in the Nordic countries it has to do with the fact that social democracy with its pro-worker policies has largely arrived. We offer our kids free education and unlimited opportunity to make great things of themselves and become whatever they want to be, regardless of their socio-economic background. So when a young guy chooses not to pursue futher education and instead becomes a fulltime man of nothing, essentially, he has only himself to blame. When he can't find it in himself to face the mirror, he has to blame the immigrants, women, feminism, politicians, the EU, globalism for stealing his chances.
And the populists are there to feed the flames.
So we know the "why." What we need to do is figure how to deal with it. For example, while girls in advanced countries for a long time have read more than boys, PISA found that the gender gap has been widening and boys read even less now. A simple issue like how to get boys read more can make a huge difference. Boys underperform girls and it has to do with the way teachers still treat boys and girls differently and let "boys be boys." This is definitely something we can change.
[Staff edit].
The United States of America is a country that still cannot offer its people basic affordable and accessible health care or even clean, safe water, and that more often than not ranks with the developing countries, so the US is clearly a breed apart. It's useless to contrast the United States to the advanced Nordic countries when Latin America and the former Eastern Bloc countries would be a more appropriate frame of reference for the United States when considering the state of American society.