Transitioning into Adulthood during the Great Recession

大萧条引起了人们的广泛关注，他们担心正在步入成年的当代年轻人有成为迷惘的一代的危险。本项目通过考察经济大衰退如何影响许多标志着从青春期过渡到成年期的状态，包括社会经济成就和家庭形成的各个方面，来探讨这些问题。潜在的影响包括青少年晚期和二十出头的年轻人获得这些地位所需的时间长度，以及他们结合这些地位的各种方式。我们将特别关注这些影响在美国不同种族/民族和社会经济群体之间的潜在差异，在受到经济衰退或多或少严重打击的地理区域之间，以及在美国-加拿大边境之间，鉴于经济衰退是如何从这里开始的，然后向北过滤的。本研究的理论价值在于，它能够将社会学和发展思维注入宏观经济过程的考虑中，包括短期历史事件如何塑造长期轨迹、青年期成为生命历程中关键时期的潜力，以及社会经济和家庭经历的相互作用。更实际的是，通过揭示重大经济衰退的伤疤效应，该项目将服务于实际经历经济衰退的年轻人的未来利益，因为他们将成为下一代工人、父母和公民，并确定未来可能在任何不可避免的经济衰退中特别脆弱的年轻人。总的来说，这项研究的目标是发展对大衰退中年轻人具体案例的多维理解，促进科学家的跨学科思维，告知公众一个非常感兴趣的问题，为研究生和本科生提供有价值的培训机会，更好地为美国青年的利益服务。利用标准化和个性化等生命过程概念以及相关研究领域，该项目将测试两组相互竞争的假设。首先，大衰退是加速还是减缓了年轻人获得主要成年身份（如全职工作、普通高等教育入学/STEM学习、婚姻/伴侣关系和为人父母）的速度？第二，大衰退是否导致这些地位在青年时期更加混乱或耦合？为了验证这些假设，本项目将应用多种统计工具（例如，兄弟姐妹固定效应、潜在类别分析、联合熵计算）来调查和地理编码来自1979年全国青年纵向研究-青年成人调查中多个18-25岁队列的数据。将在大衰退开始前后的多个时间点（特别是2004年、2006年、2008年和2010年），以及与可变的州和地方经济状况（例如失业率）的关系，对年轻人上学和工作状况的普遍程度（一般来说，在STEM领域）进行比较。此外，在大衰退之前、期间和之后，这些地位与伴侣关系和养育子女的关系（或不关系）将被评估，特别关注这些过渡模式中的社会经济、种族/民族和性别差异。综合数据分析和群体建模将使美国模型适用于加拿大全国儿童和青少年纵向调查，以进行选定的跨国比较，旨在阐明美国的情况。

Robert CrosnoeShannon E. CavanaghLeticia MarteletoUniversity of Texas at AustinThe Great Recession has generated widespread concerns that contemporary cohorts of youth making their way into adulthood are in danger of becoming a lost generation. This project explores these concerns by examining how the Great Recession has affected many of the statuses that signal the transition from adolescence into adulthood, including various aspects of socioeconomic attainment and family formation. Potential effects involve both the length of time that young people in their late teens and early twenties take to acquire these statuses and the various ways that they combine them. Special attention will be paid to the potential for these effects to vary across diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups in the U.S., across geographic locales that were more or less hard hit by the economic downturn, and across the U.S.-Canada border, given how the recession started here and then filtered northward. The theoretical value of this research lies in its ability to inject sociological and developmental thinking into considerations of macro-level economic processes, including the ways in which short-term historical events shape long-term trajectories, the potential for young adulthood to be a critical period in the life course, and the interplay of socioeconomic and family experiences. More practically, by unpacking the scarring effects of a major economic recession, this project will serve the future interests of the youth actually undergoing that recession as they age into the next generation of workers, parents, and citizens and identify future youth who may be especially vulnerable in any of the inevitable recessions yet to come. Overall, the goals of the study are to develop a multi-dimensional understanding of the specific case of young adults in the Great Recession that advances interdisciplinary thinking among scientists, inform the public about an issue of great interest, provide valuable training opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students, and better serve the interests of American youth.Drawing on life course concepts such as standardization and individualization as well as related areas of research, this project will test two set of competing hypotheses. First, did the Great Recession speed up or slow down the acquisition of major young adult statuses (e.g. full time employment, general higher education enrollment/STEM studies, marriage/partnership, and parenthood)? Second, did the Great Recession lead to more disordering or coupling of these statuses during young adulthood? To test these hypotheses, this project will apply multiple statistical tools (e.g., sibling fixed effects, latent class analysis, joint entropy calculations) to survey and geocode data from multiple 18-25 year old cohorts in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979-Young Adult Survey. The prevalence of young adult school and work statuses (in general, within STEM) will be compared across multiple points before and after the start of the Great Recession (specifically, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010) and in relation to variable state and local economic conditions (e.g., unemployment rates). Moreover, the ways in which these statuses go along with (or not) with partnership and parenting before, during, and after the Great Recession will be assessed, with special attention to socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender disparities in these transitional patterns over time. Integrated data analysis and group modeling will then adapt the U.S. models to the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth for a selected cross-national comparison designed to shed light on the U.S. case.