ABSTRACT

Change in the experience of work in youth and young adulthood is inextricably tied to broad historical shifts in the transition to adulthood, the occupational structure, and the economy. During the past several decades, the process of becoming adult has become more prolonged, largely due to the extension of higher education. Moreover, no longer can it be said that there is a single, well-recognized and institutionalized ‘pathway’ to adulthood. In comparison to prior generations of young people, today’s youth acquire the traditional role markers of adulthood, including finishing school, leaving their parental home, obtaining a full-time job, marrying, and becoming a parent, in a more variable and individualized sequence (Shanahan 2000). The decline of well-paying, blue-collar employment, linked to the contraction of the

manufacturing industry in the United States, makes it no longer feasible for young people to expect to obtain a middle-class life style with only a high school education (Schneider and Stevenson 1999). Today’s youth and their parents understand that good, high paying jobs necessitate education beyond high school, and most adolescents aspire to obtain four-year college degrees.1 A long-standing tradition of research in the United States, the ‘status attainment’ school, documents that educational attainment is the primary mediator of the link between socioeconomic origins and occupational destinations (Sewell and Hauser 1975). Youth whose parents have higher occupational prestige, education, and income encourage their children to obtain more education; their children, in turn, have higher educational aspirations, which promote higher educational and occupational attainments. Currently in the United States, young people’s educational and occupational goals are quite ambitious; currently approximately 70 percent of high school graduates enter colleges or other institutions of higher education.