Sociologists have a long-standing interest in the societal-level process of transforming children into successful adults. Recent changes in families, education, and the economy have modified the timing and indicators of successful adulthood, and researchers have yet to systematically access how these changes have helped or hindered the successful functioning of independent young adults. Even less research has been devoted to contextual factors like public policies, state economic development efforts, education, and changing financial support for higher education in helping or hindering successful transitions to adulthood. This research has three specific aims; (1) to define and describe the successful transition to adulthood in terms of educational attainment, economic security, and stable partnership, (2) to identify group and individual disparities in successful transitions, and (3) to measure the impact of social and economic environments on successful transitions to adulthood and the effects these environments have on young people of differing racial and ethnic backgrounds and immigrant statuses. We hypothesize that successful transitions to adulthood are facilitated in states and localities with extensive business capacity and high-technology job advantages and hindered in states and localities with extensive business political dominance, deindustrialization, and extreme high-technology wage advantages. We also hypothesize that successful transition to adulthood for traditionally disadvantaged groups will be easier in the states and localities with the former set of characteristics compared to states and localities with the latter set of characteristics.
The data for this project are drawn from the 1979 National Longitudinal Study of Young Men and Women and the 1997 National Longitudinal Study of Youth. These data will be concatenated to provide for a monthly analysis of successful transitions to adulthood. These data will be merged with an extensive and unique data set with assembled yearly indicators of state-level political and economic contexts covering the years 1970-2004 (see Jenkins, Leicht, and Wendt, 2006 forthcoming). The analysis will use discrete hazard modeling and hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM) to build a general model of the transition to adulthood on a wide variety of dimensions (from educational attainment to stable employment in a full-time job, employment in a job with health insurance and to independent residence) and examine systematic changes in the process leading to adulthood across cohorts and across race/ethnic and immigrant groups.
BROADER IMPACTS
This project provides important insights into the rapidly changing context surrounding transitions to adulthood by examining a broad spectrum of life-course transitions across three decades (the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s). The analysis will identify significant differences in the pathways leading to successful adulthood. More importantly, the research will provide a better understanding of the ways that state political and economic contexts help or hinder the transition to adulthood, and identify youth who are especially susceptible to contextual changes as these affect the ability of youth to become functioning and productive adults.
