(Scott Young on scotthyoung.com) – As a species, our incubation period is getting longer.

Just a few hundred years ago, finishing twelve years of education was uncommon. Today it’s difficult to get a job above minimum wage without a high-school diploma.

Teenagers were once miniature adults. Fifteen year-old girls got married. Sixteen year-old boys went to work. Today teenagers are older children. I know many people that aren’t financially independent well into their twenties.

This increase incubation is probably because, as the world becomes more specialized and complex, we need more time to learn things. Also as science and technology accelerate, we need more time to specialize. There are people who need to study principles of chemistry to get jobs today that hadn’t even been discovered 100 years ago.

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