This research concerns the transition to adulthood in the U.S. during the past three decades, with specific attention to differences between blacks and whites. It focuses on three topics central to understanding changes for youths generally and blacks in particular. These include the effects of changing labor market conditions on (1) steeply declining proportions of young persons who are married; (2) the fertility for young, unmarried women; and (3) changes in educational attainment and school enrollment. With regard to marriage trends, this research describes assortive mating between spouses with varying socioeconomic and labor force statuses, and develops new models of marriage markets to assess key hypotheses about marriage trends. The central hypotheses are that trends in marriage for young blacks result from declines in numbers of young black men with stable employment prospects on the one hand, or from the improved socioeconomic standing of black women relative to men on the other. With regard to fertility, this research examines the relationship between women's employment opportunities and their fertility, a link well-studied for married women, but neglected for unmarried women. With regard to schooling and labor market opportunities, the research attempts to specify the effects of changing economic rewards to different levels of schooling and trends in enrollment and attainment. This investigation is concerned with explaining both long-term convergence of educational attainments of blacks and whites and recent divergence between the races in rates of college enrollment, to the detriment of young blacks. The research will consist of multivariate analyses based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979-88), the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Men (1966-81) and Young Women (1968-88), the Match Current Population Survey (1964-88), and the October Current Population Survey (1968- 87).
