ABSTRACT
During the past two hundred years young people in English society have moved through three broad status phases: the first, from the 1780s to the 1860s, was a period of high status, the second, from the 1860s to the 1910s, a period of low; the third, from the 1920s up to the present time, a high status phase. ‘Young people’ between the ages of 10 and 20, no longer young children, but not yet ‘adults’ chronologically, socially or legally, have enjoyed a status which has varied with population changes and economic opportunity. The best indices of their status are probably the amount of marriage among them and the extent of their independent income.
