Transition to Adulthood

to Adulthood Transition Transition www.futureofchildren.org The Future of Children Transition to Adulthood VOLUME 20 NUMBER 1 SPRING 2010 3 Introducing the Issue 19 What’s Going on with Young People Today? The Long and Twisting Path to Adulthood 43 Immigration and Adult Transitions 67 On a New Schedule: Transitions to Adulthood and Family Change Volume 20 Number 1 Spring 2010 Volume 89 Programs and Policies to Assist High School Dropouts in the Transition to Adulthood 109 Young Adults and Higher Education: Barriers and Breakthroughs to Success 133 Labor Market Outcomes and the Transition to Adulthood 159 Civic Engagement and the Transition to Adulthood 181 The Military and the Transition to Adulthood 209 Vulnerable Populations and the Transition to Adulthood A COLLABORATION OF THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AT A COLLABORATION OF THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY AND THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRINCETON UNIVERSITY AND THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION The Future of Children seeks to translate high-level research into information that is useful Board of Advisors to policy makers, practitioners, and the media. Lawrence Balter Kay S. Hymowitz The Future of Children is a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and New York University Manhattan Institute for Policy Research International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn Charles N. Kahn III Columbia University Federation of American Hospitals Senior Editorial Staff Journal Staff Peter Budetti Marguerite Kondracke Sara McLanahan Elisabeth Hirschhorn Donahue University of Oklahoma America’s Promise—The Alliance for Youth Editor-in-Chief Executive Director Judith Feder Rebecca Maynard Princeton University Princeton University Georgetown University University of Pennsylvania Director, Center for Research on Brenda Szittya Child Wellbeing, and William S. Tod William Galston Lynn Thoman Managing Editor Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs Brookings Institution Corporate Perspectives Princeton University University of Maryland Ron Haskins Heather B. Weiss Kris Emerson Senior Editor Jean B. Grossman Harvard University Brookings Institution Program Manager Public/Private Ventures Senior Fellow and Co-Director, Center on Princeton University Princeton University Amy Wilkins Education Reform Now Children and Families Lisa Markman-Pithers Christina Paxson Outreach Director Senior Editor Princeton University Princeton University Julie Clover Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public Outreach Director and International Affairs, and Hughes-Rogers Brookings Institution Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Regina Leidy Isabel Sawhill Communications Coordinator Senior Editor Princeton University Brookings Institution Senior Fellow, Cabot Family Chair, and Mary Baugh Co-Director, Center on Children and Families Outreach Coordinator Brookings Institution The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University or the Brookings Institution. 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VOLUME 20 NUMBER 1 Spring 2010 Transition to Adulthood 3 Introducing the Issue by Gordon Berlin, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., and Mary C. Waters 19 What’s Going on with Young People Today? The Long and Twisting Path to Adulthood by Richard A. Settersten Jr. and Barbara Ray 43 Immigration and Adult Transitions by Rubén G. Rumbaut and Golnaz Komaie 67 On a New Schedule: Transitions to Adulthood and Family Change by Frank F. Furstenberg Jr. 89 Programs and Policies to Assist High School Dropouts in the Transition to Adulthood by Dan Bloom 109 Young Adults and Higher Education: Barriers and Breakthroughs to Success by Thomas Brock 133 Labor Market Outcomes and the Transition to Adulthood by Sheldon Danziger and David Ratner 159 Civic Engagement and the Transition to Adulthood by Constance Flanagan and Peter Levine 181 The Military and the Transition to Adulthood by Ryan Kelty, Meredith Kleykamp, and David R. Segal 209 Vulnerable Populations and the Transition to Adulthood by D. Wayne Osgood, E. Michael Foster, and Mark E. Courtney www.futureofchildren.org Introducing the Issue Introducing the Issue Gordon Berlin, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., and Mary C. Waters That the schedule for coming of age has been took many young adults some time to gain the rather sharply revised both in the United wherewithal to leave home and form a family. States and more broadly throughout the Formal education was typically brief because industrialized world is by now widely recog- most jobs were still related to farming, the nized. Over the past decade, especially, the trades, or the growing manufacturing sec- mass media have trumpeted the findings of a tor. By their teens, most youth were gainfully growing body of research showing that young employed, but they frequently remained at people are taking longer to leave home, attain home for a time, contributing income to their economic independence, and form families families and building resources to enter mar- of their own than did their peers half a cen- riage and form a family. tury ago. The forces behind this new timetable have been evident for several decades, By contrast, after World War II, with oppor- but social science researchers, much less tunities for good jobs abundant, young policy makers, were slow to recognize just Americans transitioned to adult roles quickly. how profound the change has been. A trickle In 1950, fewer than half of all Americans of studies during the 1980s about the prolon- completed high school, much less attended gation of young adulthood grew to a steady college. Well-paying, often unionized jobs stream during the 1990s and then to a torrent with benefits were widely available to males. during the first decade of the new millen- The marriage rush and baby boom era at nium.1 Now that researchers have shown mid-century was stimulated not only by a how and why the timetable for becoming an longing to settle down after the war years but adult has altered, policy makers must rethink also by generous new government programs whether the social institutions that once suc- to help integrate veterans back into society. cessfully educated, trained, and supported young adults are up to the task today. Today young adults take far longer to reach economic and social maturity than their Changes in the coming-of-age schedule are, in contemporaries did five or six decades ago. fact, nothing new. A century or more ago, the In large part, this shift is attributable to the transition to adulthood was also a protracted expansion of higher education beginning affair. In an agriculture-based economy, it in the late 1960s. Employers have become Gordon Berlin is president of MDRC. Frank F. Furstenberg Jr. is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology at the University of Penn- sylvania. Mary C. Waters is the M. E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. VOL. 20 / NO. 1 / SPRING 2010 3 Gordon Berlin, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., and Mary C. Waters increasingly reluctant to hire young people stigmatized. Although the stigma did not without educational credentials. Failing to deter many young couples from breaching complete high school all but relegates indi- the norms, marriage served as a safety net in viduals to a life of permanent penury; even the event of a premarital pregnancy. Today, completing high school is hardly enough to most young people expect to have sex before ensure reasonable prospects. Like it or not, marriage and have the means to prevent at least some postsecondary education is unwanted childbearing. Their contraceptive increasingly necessary. In short, education efforts are still imperfect, but the point is has become an ever more potent source of that they need not marry to have sex, and social stratification, dividing the haves and they will not necessarily become pregnant the have-nots, a theme in this volume to when they do. which we will return. The past several decades, then, have wit- nessed a big change in how and when youth Many observers, especially take on adult roles—to put it another way, another notable shift in the “normal” pattern in the mass media, worry of moving from adolescence to adulthood. that this new timetable for Although today’s delayed schedule is reminis- cent of the pattern a century ago, however, adulthood has created a the two are fundamentally different. Today, growing sense of entitlement young people (unless they are the children of recent immigrants) rarely contribute earn- and a lingering pattern of ings to the household; by and large, they dependency. are either fully or partially beholden to their parents for support while they complete their schooling and find a foothold in the labor The boom in higher education is not the force. Typically, they defer marriage in favor only reason why young adults are taking of cohabitation even when they do leave the more time to gain independence from their natal household. families and establish themselves in adult roles. The schedule for growing up, no doubt, Although today’s young adults and their has been affected by the lengthening of the parents value independence highly, both life span over the past century.

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