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Diverse pathways from adolescence to early adulthood among China's rural youth: A new perspective
Abstract
Past studies examining the transition to adulthood within the Chinese context often implicitly or explicitly assume that the rural population is a homogeneous group and suggest that rural individuals tend to enter the workforce and marry at younger ages than their urban peers. This assumption overlooks the distinct challenges faced by rural youth, who often confront higher poverty risks and greater uncertainties compared to urban counterparts, yet empirical research on these unique challenges is limited. Using both a national survey and a unique longitudinal sample of rural youth in one of the poorest regions of China, this study demonstrates that rural youth experience a greater diversity of pathways from adolescence to early adulthood than do urban youth, which contradicts many earlier studies in Western contexts. In addition, this study identifies a variety of childhood environment factors that structure the transition pathways of rural youth. This study highlights the growing rural–urban disparity in China and has important implications for research on social stratification and rural youth development.
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Urban-rural economic opportunity gaps drive rural youth to seek economic stability by migrating away from home and family. The links between educational attainment and economic outcomes for rural youth are well studied in China and elsewhere, but the implications of educational mobility for rural family relationships remain less understood. Extending tenets of second demographic transition theory, we posit that education sets the stage for “individualization:” geographic mobility for urban work distant from rural family networks. Educational mobility may thus set conditions for upending traditional family co-residence patterns, direct-support relationships, and family-gender attitudes. In this paper, we consider first whether educational advancement is associated with urban economic mobility for rural youth in young adulthood, and then ask whether education is linked to disruption of rural family relations. Specifically, using the case of children growing up in rural northwest China, we estimate relationships between secondary and tertiary educational attainment and (1) economic stability, (2) intergenerational geographic separation and material exchange, and (3) traditional family and gender role attitudes, after adjusting for potential confounders. Results show that for both men and women, education is associated with greater economic stability in young adulthood, across several measures, and with an erosion of adherence to traditional family and gender attitudes. Moreover, for men, education correlates to less family proximity and more material exchange.
Despite the vast literature on the sibling effects on child educational outcomes, less is known about how sibling gender structure relates to intrahousehold non-monetary resource dilution, mobilization, and transfer in non-western contexts. Utilizing nationally representative survey data from Chinese adolescents, this study investigated how sibship size and gender composition are associated with the household distribution of non-monetary resources such as parental monitoring, parent-child activities, parental educational aspiration, and child housework labor. China provides an especially important context to expand our understanding of the gendered sibling effects due to its traditionally patriarchal norms and persistent son preference, state-controlled fertility policies and low fertility rate, and escalating private education investment. Findings reveal a significantly gendered pattern of intrahousehold non-monetary resource dilution: children with more brothers experienced decreased parental monitoring and increased housework time, while children with more sisters were not disadvantaged in the same way; moreover, children with more younger brothers experienced decreased parental educational aspiration, while the numbers of other siblings did not show such effects. Furthermore, boys were less impacted by sibling competition for parental non-monetary resources than girls. These findings point to more subtle forms of gender inequality embedded in intrahousehold resource allocation that may not be as evident as inequality in monetary resources. Results also have important implications in the post-One-Child-Policy era and beyond the Chinese context.
Background: Existing literature has found that the ways in which people transition to adulthood has changed substantially in most Western countries since the late 1960s, but few studies have investigated such changes in the Chinese context. Objective: This study examines a new pattern in family and work-related roles during the transition to adulthood among Chinese youth born between 1930 and 1979. Methods: The China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study conducted in 2014 provides life history data for consecutive years. Multichannel sequence analysis is applied to 19,002 respondents to identify the clusters of trajectories to adulthood. Multinomial logistic regression is used to estimate the likelihood of belonging to each of the clusters of pathways to adulthood. Results: We identify a new pattern, characterized by growing diversity and delay, in the transition to adulthood, which was mainly reflected in the long studies and stable employment cluster in the domain of employment and the staying single longer cluster in the field of family life course. Males and urban residents were more likely to fall into the patterns characterized by high education, stable work, and late transition. Female and rural residents tended to fall into the categories characterized by low education, agricultural work, and early transition. Conclusions: The trajectories to adulthood exhibited by Chinese youth are policy-driven and nonautonomous and have been affected by government policies. Contribution: We provide a comprehensive picture of the transition to adulthood of young adults in China and highlight the impact of state policies on their trajectories to adulthood.
This study investigates whether young people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have experienced processes of de-standardization of the life course similar to those observed in high-income societies. We provide two contributions to the relevant literature. First, we use data from 263 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) across 69 LMICs, offering the richest comparative account of women’s transition to adulthood (TTA) patterns in the developing world existing to date. In so doing, we shift the focus from individual life-course transitions towards a holistic approach that allows us to characterize the life-course complexity by detailed sequences of events, namely first sexual intercourse, first union, and first birth. Second, using a clustering algorithm based on optimal-matching distances of lifecourse sequences, we identify clusters of TTA and explore their changes across cohorts by region and urban/rural location of residence. Results stress the importance of investigating cross-regional differences in partnership and fertility trajectories by looking at the interrelation and complexity of status combinations. Summarizing the ensuing heterogeneity through four clusters, we document significant differences by macro-regions yet relative stability across cohorts. We interpret the latter as suggestive of cultural specificities that make the TTA resistant to change and slow to converge across regions, if converging at all.
Objective: This article investigates marital sorting by household registration status (hukou) and education in contemporary urban China, paying special attention to individuals who have achieved rural‐to‐urban hukou mobility before marriage.
Background: Existing theoretical frameworks of assortative mating have highlighted economic resources and cultural matching as two key dimensions. These two frameworks place a different emphasis on individuals' achieved versus ascriptive characteristics and hold different implications for understanding the link between marital sorting patterns and social openness or closure. With a focus on hukou converters, this study examines the relative importance of achieved versus ascriptive traits in China's marriage market and contributes to the evaluation of the two frameworks.
Method: This study adopts a mixed‐methods approach. The quantitative analysis uses the harmonic mean marriage function to analyze the nationally representative 2006 China General Social Survey. The qualitative data consist of 115 in‐depth interviews collected in two Chinese metropolitan areas between 2016 and 2017.
Results: Quantitative results showed that hukou converters and urban‐born individuals had the highest propensity of marrying a spouse of the same hukou trajectory. Qualitative results further revealed the gap between converters and their urban‐born peers to be hierarchical. Although both groups emphasized the importance of shared values and habitus in evaluating prospective partners, urban‐born individuals regarded hukou converters as a culturally distinct and less desirable option.
Conclusion: The findings highlight the power of cultural matching in China's urban marriage market. Hukou converters' rural origin remains visible and acts as a source of lasting symbolic distinction despite adulthood status attainment.
American workers’ occupational status strongly reflects the status of their parents. Men and women who grew up in a two-earner or father-breadwinner family achieved occupations that rose 0.5 point for every one-point increase in their parents’ statuses (less if their father was absent). Gender differences were small in two-earner families and mother-only families, but men’s status persisted more when the father was the sole breadwinner. Intergenerational persistence did not change in the time the data cover (1994–2016). Absolute mobility declined for recent birth cohorts; barely half the men and women born in the 1980s were upwardly mobile compared with two-thirds of those born in the 1940s. The results as described hold for a socioeconomic index (SEI) that scores occupation according to the average pay and credentials of people in the occupation. Most results were the same when occupations were coded by different criteria, but SEI produced the smallest gender differences.
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a multivariate statistical method that has become a fundamental tool in the development and validation of psychological theories and measurements. However, researchers must make several thoughtful and evidence-based methodological decisions while conducting an EFA, and there are a number of options available at each decision point, some better than others. Reviews of the professional literature have consistently found that many applications of EFA are marked by an injudicious choice of methods and incomplete reports. This article provides a systematic, evidence-based guide to the conduct of EFA studies that can be followed by researchers with modest statistical training, supplemented with an example to illustrate its application.
Drawing on data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies, this research investigates the gendered patterns of the time spent by girls and boys on housework in families with distinct structures, with the presence at home or absence from home of the mother, father, elder/younger sister and brother, and male/female extended family members. The results support the theory of gendered domestic labor substitution, as children are seen to “substitute” for the lack and benefit from the surplus of domestic labor resulting from the absence/presence of other male and female family members. The results also depict a neo-patriarchal hierarchy that regulates the complex (re)production of domestic gender inequalities in the Chinese family. Addressing the intersection between the “stalled” and “uneven” domestic gender revolution and the increasing diversity of family forms in post-reform China, this research underlines the importance of mainstreaming children into research on the gendered division of domestic labor.
Using data from nationally representative household surveys, we test whether Indian parents make trade-offs between the number of children and investments in education. To address the endogeneity due to the joint determination of quantity and quality of children, we instrument family size with the gender of the first child, which is plausibly random. Given a strong son preference in India, parents tend to have more children if the firstborn is a girl. Our instrumental variable results show that children from larger families have lower educational attainment and are less likely to be enrolled in school, with larger effects for rural, poorer, and low-caste families as well as for families with illiterate mothers.
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The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13524-017-0575-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Hukou locality (local vs. nonlocal) is an important source of social inequality in urban China. Residents with Shanghai hukou, for example, have better access to social benefits, jobs, schools, and other opportunities in
Shanghai. In this paper, using data from the 2013 Fudan Yangtze River Delta Social Transformation Survey, we evaluate how hukou locality intersects with educational attainment to shape assortative marriage patterns among
individuals born in the 1980s and living in Shanghai. We find that highly-educated hukou residents and non-hukou migrants are more likely than their less-educated counterparts to marry hukou residents. In addition, hukou
intermarriage seldom occurs when hukou residents marry non-hukou migrants with less education than themselves. The results suggest that Shanghai hukou is a valuable attribute in the Shanghai marriage market and shapes marriage market conditions and individual marital choices.
Background: The transition to adulthood has increasingly been postponed, shuffled, and individualized in the United States and Western Europe. Less is known about changes in the transition to adulthood in non-Western countries, especially whether they follow a similar pattern of change. Moreover, the existing literature uses diverse indicators to measure the transition to adulthood, which makes the cross-national comparison even more difficult. Objective: This article takes a structural view to examine changes in the transition to adulthood in China, which has the largest youth population in the world and which has experienced rapid social change since reform in the 1980s. Methods: The analysis uses data from 1982, 1990, and 2000 censuses and a 2005 mini-census. It treats participants aged 18−30 as synthetic cohorts and examines changes in three structural features of the transition to adulthood: timing, sequencing, and heterogeneity. Results: Though school completion and entry into the labor force have been notably delayed, only minor delays have occurred in marriage and parenthood. Some individualization occurs in urban residents, but the pathway remains relatively structured and follows a very ordered sequence. Conclusions: These findings suggest stability in the transition to adulthood amidst rapid social change in China during these twenty years.
Students in rural China are dropping out of secondary school at troubling rates. While there is considerable quantitative research on this issue, no systematic effort has been made to assess the deeper reasons behind student decision making through a mixed-methods approach. This article seeks to explore the prevalence, correlates and potential reasons for rural dropout throughout the secondary education process. It brings together results from eight large-scale survey studies covering 24,931 rural secondary students across four provinces, as well as analysis of extensive interviews with 52 students from these same study sites. The results show that the cumulative dropout rate across all windows of secondary education may be as high as 63 per cent. Dropping out is significantly correlated with low academic performance, high opportunity cost, low socio-economic status and poor mental health. A model is developed to suggest that rural dropout is primarily driven by two mechanisms: rational cost-benefit analysis or impulsive, stress-induced decision making.
Analyzing data from the Programme for International Student Assessment Hong Kong 2009 and 2012 (n = 7,669), we examined the differences in socioeconomic characteristics of fathers and mothers and levels of parental involvement between two-parent, single-mother, and single-father families in Hong Kong. We found that parents from single-mother and single-father families fare differently in terms of sociodemographic background and parental involvement at home. We also investigated the differences in students’ academic performance among these families. Past studies failed to find any significant effect of single parenthood on students’ academic performance in Hong Kong. We found negative effects of single fatherhood, but not single motherhood, on educational outcomes. The disadvantages of single fatherhood are partially explained by the poorer sociodemographic background and lower levels of parental involvement.
Using population intercensus and national survey data, we examine marriage timing in urban China spanning the past six decades. Descriptive analysis from the intercensus shows that marriage patterns have changed in China. Marriage age is delayed for both men and women, and prevalence of nonmarriage became as high as one-quarter for men in recent birth cohorts with very low levels of education. Capitalizing on individual-level survey data, we further explore the effects of demographic and socioeconomic determinants of entry into marriage in urban China over time. Our study yields three significant findings. First, the influence of economic prospects on marriage entry has significantly increased during the economic reform era for men. Second, the positive effect of working in the state-owned sector has substantially weakened. Third, educational attainment now has a negative effect on marriage timing for women. Taken together, these results suggest that the traditional hypergamy norm has persisted in China as an additional factor in the influences of economic resources on marriage formation.
Researchers using latent class (LC) analysis often proceed using the following three steps: (1) an LC model is built for a set of response variables, (2) subjects are assigned to LCs based on their posterior class membership probabilities, and (3) the association between the assigned class membership and external variables is investigated using simple cross-tabulations or multinomial logistic regression analysis. Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars (2004) demonstrated that such a three-step approach underestimates the associations between covariates and class membership. They proposed resolving this problem by means of a specific correction method that involves modifying the third step. In this article, I extend the correction method of Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars by showing that it involves maximizing a weighted log-likelihood function for clustered data. This conceptualization makes it possible to apply the method not only with categorical but also with continuous explanatory variables, to obtain correct tests using complex sampling variance estimation methods, and to implement it in standard software for logistic regression analysis. In addition, a new maximum likelihood (ML)-based correction method is proposed, which is more direct in the sense that it does not require analyzing weighted data. This new three-step ML method can be easily implemented in software for LC analysis. The reported simulation study shows that both correction methods perform very well in the sense that their parameter estimates and their SEs can be trusted, except for situations with very poorly separated classes. The main advantage of the ML method compared with the Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars approach is that it is much more efficient and almost as efficient as one-step ML estimation. © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved.
Latent class analysis is a clustering method that is nowadays widely used in social science research. Researchers applying latent class analysis will typically not only construct a typology based on a set of observed variables but also investigate how the encountered clusters are related to other, external variables. Although it is possible to incorporate such external variables into the latent class model itself, researchers usually prefer using a three-step approach. This is the approach wherein after establishing the latent class model for clustering (step 1), one obtains predictions for the class membership scores (step 2) and subsequently uses these predicted scores to assess the relationship between class membership and other variables (step 3). Bolck, Croon, and Hagenaars (2004) showed that this approach leads to severely downward-biased estimates of the strength of the relationships studied in step 3. These authors and later also Vermunt (2010) developed methods to correct for this bias. In the current study, we extended these correction methods to situations where class membership is not predicted but used as an explanatory variable in the third step, a situation widely encountered in social science applications. A simulation study tested the performance of the proposed correction methods, and their practical use was illustrated with real data examples. The results showed that also when the latent class variable is used as a predictor of external variables, the uncorrected three-step approach leads to severely biased estimates. The proposed correction methods perform well under conditions encountered in practice.
This article explores the lessons of family change in the West for emerging patterns of change in East and Southeast Asia, especially for the transition to adulthood. This passage has become more protracted and less predictable in Western nations. There is also a great deal of variation in the patterning of the adult transition in different nations in Europe and the Anglo-speaking nations. I identify some of the reasons for this variation—economic, cultural, and institutional—that account for the varied regimes of early adulthood and speculate how they may impact different Asian countries, owing to historical, cultural, and institutional patterns.
This article aims to (1) describe trends for Chinese young adults’ pathways into adulthood for birth cohorts that have experienced distinct historical events over the past half century and (2) examine factors that shape young adults’ transitioning behavior. We draw data from the 2005 to 2008 Chinese General Social Survey. In contrast to the increasingly protracted trend seen in many Western societies, the more recent Chinese cohorts transitioned to marriage and parenthood sooner than those who grew up during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The economic and education reforms since the late 1970s have greatly increased urban-rural disparity in youths’ life trajectories despite their generally positive impact on young adults’ educational attainment and economic well-being. While near-universal marriage and childbearing within marriage prevail and son preference remains strong in modern China, evidence suggests that today’s young Chinese are exploring new pathways to adulthood, including cohabitation and premarital sex.
Sociologists have long been interested in the effects of sibship structures. Although previous research generally focuses on the impacts of sibship characteristics on educational outcomes, these characteristics may also affect individuals’ decisions about marriage by shaping their resource availability, parental expectations, or social skills and contacts. Using a nationally representative sample from Taiwan, we examine how sibship size, birth-order rank, and sibship sex composition are associated with men’s and women’s transitions to first marriage. The analysis shows that men who have no male siblings tend to accelerate their rates of entering marriage. By contrast, women with more siblings or in earlier birth positions are likely to do the same. We argue that the findings for women reflect the influences of sibship structures on household resource allocation, whereas those for men have to do with the cultural emphasis on sons’ responsibility for carrying on the family lineage. Moreover, Chinese cultural norms that prescribe different roles for married sons and daughters account for the asymmetrical mechanisms revealed for men and women in Taiwan. Results from this study thus underscore the need to consider family norms and cultural contexts in explaining the transition to marriage.
Family formation in China has undergone dramatic changes. Despite increasing academic attention, few studies have taken a holistic approach to study cohort change in Chinese family life courses. In this study, we assess how family life course patterns and diversity changed across 1930–1978 birth cohorts. Moreover, we evaluate to what extent changing norms, economic constraints, and institutional reforms drove cohort differences. Data from the China Family Panel Studies and sequence analysis are applied to identify family life course patterns and to calculate sequence diversity. While we found a shift in family life course patterns across 1930–1978 birth cohorts, there is no evidence that Chinese family lives have become more diverse. On the contrary, our results demonstrate that family life courses have become relatively standardized around relatively early marriage and a single child. We find that factors associated with economic constraints and educational attainment—not ideational change or institutional reforms—account for a considerable portion of cross‐cohort variation in the diversity of family life courses. Rather than a second demographic transition, the family demographic behavior of 1930–1978 Chinese birth cohorts is marked by continuity despite change.
Over the past few decades, the increasing divorce rate has been one of the most prominent behavioral changes influencing Chinese families and the nurturing and socialization of children. Research has found that parental divorce exerts only a limited negative impact on children's socioeconomic achievement in China relative to that in Western societies. However, few studies have explored the long-term consequences of parental divorce on children's demographic outcomes in China. Therefore, how parental divorce influences the timing of offspring's first sexual intercourse and marriage, as well as its impact on their sexual and marital well-being, were investigated in this study. Based on findings obtained using data from the Chinese Private Life Survey, children from divorced families were more likely to initiate sexual intercourse at younger ages than those from intact families, although the two groups entered their first marriage at similar ages. Regarding sexual and marital well-being, married men and women who experienced parental divorce during childhood were less satisfied with their current marriage and marital sex and exhibited a higher level of divorce proneness and more sexual dysfunction symptoms than those from intact families. The effect of parental divorce on marital well-being was also largely mediated by the onset of sexual intercourse at a younger age. Having more years of premarital sexual experience was associated with lower sexual satisfaction, more sexual dysfunction symptoms, and more liberal sexual attitudes and behaviors. The worsening of sexual life also further undermined marital well-being.
Informal family separation due to parental labor migration is an increasingly common experience in the lives of children in many countries. This paper proposes a framework and method for analyzing “effect pathways” by which parental labor migration might affect children’s outcomes. The framework incorporates home-environment and child-development mechanisms and is adapted from migration, sociology of education and child development literatures. We test these pathways using data on father absence and long-term educational outcomes for girls and boys in China. We apply structural equation models with inverse probability of treatment weighting to data from a 15-year longitudinal survey of 2,000 children. Significantly, fathers’ migration has distinct implications for different effect pathways. It is associated most significantly with reduced human capital at home, which has the largest detrimental effect on children’s educational attainment, among those studied. At the same time, father absence is associated with better family economic capital, which partially buffers the negative implications of father absence. Overall, father absence corresponds to a reduction of 0.342 years on average in children’s educational attainment, but the reduction is larger for boys than for girls. For boys and girls, the reduced availability of literate adults in the household linked to father absence is an important effect pathway. For girls, this detrimental effect is partially offset by a positive income effect, but for boys, the offset effect is trivial.
A large body of research has examined the relationship between family size and child well-being in developing countries, but most of this literature has focused on the consequences of high fertility. The impact of family size in a low-fertility developing country context remains unknown, even though more developing countries are expected to reach below-replacement fertility levels. Set in China between 2010 and 2016, this study examines whether an increase in family size reduces parental investment received by the firstborn child. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study improves on previous research by using direct measures of parental investment, including monetary and nonmonetary investment, and distinguishing household-level from child-specific resources. It also exploits the longitudinal nature of the CFPS to mediate the bias arising from the joint determination of family size and parental investment. Results show that having a younger sibling significantly reduces the average household expenditure per capita. It also directly reduces parental investment received by the firstborn child, with two exceptions: (1) for firstborn boys, having a younger sister does not pose any competition; and (2) for firstborn children whose mothers have completed primary education or more, having a younger brother does not reduce parental educational aspirations for them. Findings from this study provide the first glimpse into how children fare as China transitions to a universal two-child policy regime but have wider implications beyond the Chinese context.
This study aims to understand the prevalence and characteristics of individuals aged 16 to 35 who are not in education, employment, or training (NEET) and the risk factors associated with being in NEET in China. The analysis uses the 2012 China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey to show that the NEET rate was 8 percent during the study period. Multilevel logistic regression indicates that women were more likely to be in NEET. Married women and female migrants had significantly higher risks of being in NEET, with migration having opposite effects for men and women. Education had protective effects against being in NEET, especially for women. Age had a nonlinear effect, with individuals aged 22 to 25 at the highest risk of being in NEET. I discuss implications for public policy and directions for future studies on NEET in China.
A crisis for youth labor market conditions has been building globally for more than two decades, reflected in the persistently high rates of youth unemployment around the world, which is about three times as high as that for adults. About one in five young people are not in education, employment, or training, and a large share of young adults are working in the informal economy or in precarious conditions. This volume includes a collection of thirteen articles that examine the causes, patterns, and consequences of labor market uncertainties for youth and young adults in Europe, Latin/South America, the United States, and Asia, as well as a concluding article. They reveal vast inequalities among young people, with those having the least education and lowest skills, females, those with low family socioeconomic status (SES), ethnic minorities, and migrants being the most vulnerable. In this introduction, we describe the global trends and regional variation in labor market conditions for young people, explicate the importance of integrating young people into labor markets, and summarize the findings and policy implications of these articles.
Internal migration in China has resulted in large numbers of left-behind children. Despite growing attention paid to this population, existing research has not systematically addressed the mediating mechanisms linking parental migration to children's health. The present study examines the influences of migration on the health of left-behind children in China and the mediating channels, using data from a new nationally representative survey. We compare three groups of rural children aged 3–15 years ( N = 2473): those who were left behind by both parents, those who were left behind by one parent and those living with both non-migrant parents. Results show that the health of rural children left behind by both parents (but not by one parent) is worse than the health of children living with both parents. The health disadvantage of these children is mediated by their caregivers' poor health status and caregiving practices. These mediating factors not only have a direct impact on child health but also exert an indirect impact by shaping children's nutritional intakes. Contrary to conventional wisdom, monetary remittances are not a significant mechanism linking migration to child health.
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, divorced single parenthood has become more prevalent in China. Nevertheless, divorced single parenthood and its impact on child outcomes have not been studied as much in China as in the West. Most studies in Western societies have reported that divorce and single parenthood are associated with disadvantaged child outcomes. This has been attributed in part to the prevalence of divorce among parents with low socioeconomic status and decreased child monitoring when one parent is absent. In China, however, there are several buffering mechanisms that may reduce the negative impact of divorce on children. Using data from four waves of the China Family Panel Studies, this study examines the effects of divorce and single parenthood on children’s academic performance and subjective wellbeing. The results show that children living with divorced single mothers performed as well as children from intact families, whereas children living with divorced single fathers and stepparents were disadvantaged in academic performance and subjective wellbeing. Frequent quarrels between parents in intact families also had a negative impact on child outcomes.
Family life courses are thought to have become more complex in Europe. This study uses SHARELIFE data from 14 European countries to analyze the family life courses of individuals born in 1924–1956 from ages 15 to 50. A new methodological approach, combining complexity metrics developed in sequence analysis with cross-classified multilevel modeling, is used to simultaneously quantify the proportions of variance attributable to birth cohort and country differences. This approach allows the direct comparison of changing levels of family trajectory differentiation across birth cohorts with cross-national variation, which provides a benchmark against which temporal change may be evaluated. The results demonstrate that family trajectories have indeed become more differentiated but that change over time is minor compared with substantial cross-national variation. Further, cross-national differences in family trajectory differentiation correspond with differences in dominant family life course patterns. With regard to debates surrounding the second demographic transition thesis and the comparative life course literature, the results indicate that the degree of change over time tends to be overstated relative to large cross-national differences.
Since the end of 1990s, approximately 160 million Chinese rural workers migrated to cities for work. Because of restrictions on migrant access to local health and education systems, many rural children are left behind in home villages to grow up without parental care. This article examines how exposure to cumulative parental migration affects children’s health and education outcomes. Using the Rural-Urban Migration Survey in China (RUMiC) data, we measure the share of children’s lifetime during which parents were away from home. We instrument this measure of parental absence with weather changes in their home villages when parents were aged 16–25, when they were most likely to initiate migration. Results show a sizable adverse effect of exposure to parental migration on the health and education outcomes of children: in particular, boys. We also find that the use of the contemporaneous measure for parental migration in previous studies is likely to underestimate the effect of exposure to parental migration on children’s outcomes.
This chapter offers a broad overview of the experience of youth from 1900 up to the present. It describes changes in the experience of young people between the ages of sixteen and thirty who lived between 1900 and 2000, distinguishing between men and women, native-born and foreign-born individuals, and native-born whites and blacks. It relates changes in the combinations of adult statuses that average young people in these groups experience both to historical events and to structural and cultural change. Using U.S. census data, the chapter identifies the ways in which the transition to adulthood has become more complex in the latter half of the twentieth century but also the greater similarity among gender, race, and nativity groups in the way in which the transition to adulthood is experienced in terms of sociodemographic status combinations. As more young people, regardless of gender, race, or nativity, participate in secondary education through their teens, young people leave home at later ages. Furthermore, the norms surrounding the appropriate age for marriage and childbearing have changed radically over the century.
With unprecedented migration taking place in China, millions of children are profoundly affected. Using a sample of 916 children (aged 5-18) of migrants and the life course perspective, this article examines the impact of parental migration on children's health. Results show that migration has a complex impact on children's health. Although migrating to cities itself does not benefit children, poor housing conditions in cities have a negative impact on their health. The timing of parental migration is important, as preschoolers migrating with parents and teenagers left behind by parents have significantly worse health than others. Migration also has a gendered effect, as teenage boys benefit from migrating to cities but suffer from being left behind when compared to teenage girls.
Research on the intergenerational transmission of divorce should be expanded to incorporate disrupted nonmarital cohabitations. This study (a) examined the transmission of union instability from parents to offspring using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, (b) replaced binary variables (divorced vs. nondivorced) typically used in this literature with count variables (number of disrupted unions), (c) relied on independent sources for data on parents' and offspring's union disruptions to minimize same-source bias, (d) assessed the mediating role of theoretically derived variables (many not previously considered in this literature), and (e) incorporated information on discord in intact parental unions. Parent and offspring union disruptions were positively linked, with each parental disruption associated with a 16% increase in the number of offspring disruptions, net of controls. The mediators collectively accounted for 44% of the estimated intergenerational effect. Parent discord in intact unions was associated with more offspring disruptions.
During the last three decades, China has experienced the largest migration in human history. China's great migration has had transformative social, economic, and demographic consequences for China and the world. In this review, first I provide background on China's household registration system (hukou), which has been in existence since the late 1950s and continues to affect the life chances of Chinese people. Then I focus on the great migration by discussing research that has examined its causes, migration trends, the adaptation/assimilation of migrants in urban China, the well-being of migrant children, and migration's impact on rural China. Finally, I identify key areas for future research and argue that China's great migration holds major promise to contribute to the literature on migration studies.
This introduction provides the socioeconomic contexts in Asia and summarizes findings of the nine articles in this special issue that examine the trend and patterns of one-parent families in Asia and the consequences of such family structure for children's well-being. In Asia, out-of-wedlock births remain uncommon to date. Along with the decline in mortality of parents, divorce and migration are the major causes of one parenthood. The papers present diverse forms of one-parent families in Asia and show how culture and policies shape the experience of growing up with one parent. Although children living with one parent often face challenges, depending on gender, socioeconomic status, and the causes of lone parenthood, living with one parent has varying consequences. Public assistance for lone parents are typically limited in Asia, and extended families may play a bigger role in the lives of lone parents and their children in some countries than in western societies.
Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, Unequal Childhoods explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of "leisure" activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of "concerted cultivation" designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on "the accomplishment of natural growth," in which a child's development unfolds spontaneously—as long as basic comfort, food, and shelter are provided. Each of these approaches to childrearing brings its own benefits and its own drawbacks. In identifying and analyzing differences between the two, Lareau demonstrates the power, and limits, of social class in shaping the lives of America's children. The first edition of Unequal Childhoods was an instant classic, portraying in riveting detail the unexpected ways in which social class influences parenting in white and African American families. A decade later, Annette Lareau has revisited the same families and interviewed the original subjects to examine the impact of social class in the transition to adulthood.
In this paper I propose an expansion of the theory of planned behavior that considers how attitudes toward competing behaviors affect a focal behavior. Specifically, I explore how attitudes toward childbearing and the competing behaviors of educational attainment, career development, and consumer spending affect childbearing behavior. The empirical analyses use data from an eight-wave longitudinal study of mother-child pairs, the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children. The results indicate that positive attitudes toward children and childbearing increase rates of marital childbearing, while positive attitudes toward careers and luxury goods reduce rates of premarital childbearing. I conclude that theories and models of the attitude-behavior relationship should be expanded to include attitudes toward competing behaviors, and that social scientists who study childbearing behavior would benefit from greater emphasis on social psychological explanations of behavior.
Little is known about what affects the decision to migrate in China, despite the estimated 145 million rural migrants that reside in urban areas as of 2009. Drawing on a survey of youth from 100 villages in Gansu Province, we analyze migration and education decisions, with a focus on disparities associated with gender, sibship structure, and academic performance. Results show modest gender differences favoring boys in educational migration, but no gender differences in the overall likelihood of labor migration. Youth with older sisters are less likely to migrate, while youth with younger brothers are more likely to migrate. For girls, having older sisters is also negatively related to being a local or a migrant student, and better early academic performance is related to educational migration. For boys, labor migration may serve as a backup plan in the event of failing the high school entrance examination. Overall, results shed more light on the factors shaping educational migration than labor migration.
China’s rural-to-urban migration has affected 12.6 million school-age rural children who have migrated with their parents
and another 22 million who have been left behind by their migrant parents. Not enough is known, either theoretically or empirically,
about the causal impact of migration on the well-being of this large number of Chinese children affected by migration. Propensity
score matching methods are applied to estimate the effects of migration in children 10–15 years old from a 2010 national survey
(N = 2,417). Children’s migration has significant positive effects on their objective well-being but no negative effects on
their subjective well-being. There is little difference between the left-behind and non-migrant children across multiple life
domains. The Rosenbaum bounds tests indicate that the causal effects of child migration are sensitive to hidden bias for certain
outcomes, but not for others.
We study the properties of a three-step approach to estimating the parameters of a latent structure model for categorical data and propose a simple correction for a common source of bias. Such models have a measurement part (essentially the latent class model) and a structural (causal) part (essentially a system of logit equations). In the three-step approach, a stand-alone measurement model is first defined and its parameters are estimated. Individual predicted scores on the latent variables are then computed from the parameter estimates of the measurement model and the individual observed scoring patterns on the indicators. Finally, these predicted scores are used in the causal part and treated as observed variables. We show that such a naive use of predicted latent scores cannot be recommended since it leads to a systematic underestimation of the strength of the association among the variables in the structural part of the models. However, a simple correction procedure can eliminate this systematic bias. This approach is illustrated on simulated and real data. A method that uses multiple imputation to account for the fact that the predicted latent variables are random variables can produce standard errors for the parameters in the structural part of the model.
This paper investigates community impoverishment and industrialization as explanations for educational gender gaps in rural China with analysis of a multi-province household survey and a longitudinal study of youth in one impoverished province. We consider attributes of poor communities that might shape gaps and the related roles of household and community poverty. Three major results emerge from this paper: community impoverishment, not industrialization, correlates with gaps; poverty and isolation shape gaps differently at different educational levels; and girls in relatively wealthy households fare better than boys at the transition to high school. Results suggest the importance of theorizing differences by educational stage and the need for research that conceptualizes the non-local dimensions of industrialization as potential considerations in educational decisions.
This essay draws on an original cross‐sectional survey of 1,010 children and their guardians in highly migratory regions of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces located in China's interior. It uses propensity score matching, a technique that mitigates endogenity, to examine the impact of parental migration and post‐migration guardianship arrangements on the children's educational performance as measured by test scores for Chinese and mathematics. One core finding is that the educational performance of children is adversely affected by parental migration only when both parents migrate or when a non‐parent guardian is the principal carer. Additionally, longer durations of parental absence are associated with poorer educational performance. The migration of two parents only significantly adversely affects the educational performance of boys. There is no significant effect on the educational performance of girls. On the basis of our findings we argue that rather than support left‐behind children within the countryside, the long‐term policy response should be to remove the institutional obstacles that prevent family resettlement in the cities.
Despite a mounting interest in the elderly, and a rapidly expanding literature on the subject, there is a dearth of empirical research that can shed light on their condition. For Bangladesh and the rest of South Asia, the record is very thin. With the aid of observed and retrospective data on time-use from a sample of rural Bangladeshis, this paper seeks to help redress this situation by describing the role of the elderly in the household division of labour, management, and authority. The objective is to elaborate how labour-use and activity patterns change with advancing age, for men and women and rich and poor, and to explore the broader implications of such change. Concepts of work, retirement, and dependency are critically examined. The results of several labour surveys are used to estimate the limits that the physical effects of ageing place on the labour-force participation of the elderly.
The literature on father absence is frequently criticized for its use of cross-sectional data and methods that fail to take account of possible omitted variable bias and reverse causality. We review studies that have responded to this critique by employing a variety of innovative research designs to identify the causal effect of father absence, including studies using lagged dependent variable models, growth curve models, individual fixed effects models, sibling fixed effects models, natural experiments, and propensity score matching models. Our assessment is that studies using more rigorous designs continue to find negative effects of father absence on offspring well-being, although the magnitude of these effects is smaller than what is found using traditional cross-sectional designs. The evidence is strongest and most consistent for outcomes such as high school graduation, children's social-emotional adjustment, and adult mental health.
Using data on Korean youths aged 15–29, this study illustrates the processes through which Korean youths make transitions to adulthood along with their life course, focusing on four transition markers—school enrollment, labor force participation, marriage, and the establishment of an independent household. Distinguishing young people’s status in the productive and reproduction spheres, I consider the combination of study and work statuses to represent the productive sphere and the combination of marriage and household headship to represent the reproductive sphere. I examine how these statuses change with age, with an explicit focus on gender differences. The investigation reveals the significance of educational institutions for transitions to adulthood among Korean youths and also substantial gender differences in the transition process. I also investigate heterogeneity in these statuses of young people by looking at how parental education and occupation affect the transition statuses. Family background matters more for Korean women’s transition to adulthood than it does for Korean men’s.
Despite China's substantial internal migration, longstanding rural-urban bifurcation has prompted many migrants to leave their children behind in rural areas. This study examines the consequences of out-migration for children's education using longitudinal data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (N = 885). This study takes into account the complex family migration strategies and distinguishes various types of migration in China, including different forms of parental migration as well as sibling migration. Results show that migration of siblings generates benefits for children's education, which is particularly pronounced for girls and children at middle-school levels. But parental migration has not given children left behind a significant advantage in educational prospects as their parents had hoped. Younger children seem to be especially susceptible to the disruptive effect of parental out-migration.
The paper assesses parental influences on young adults' attitudes toward gendered family roles, housework allocation, and housework enjoyment. The effects of parents' housework allocation, educational attainment, and religious participation are examined, as well as mothers' gender role attitudes and labor force participation. Using data from an intergenerational panel study, the analysis finds that children's ideal allocation of housework at age 18 is predicted by maternal gender role attitudes when the children were very young and by the parental division of housework when the children were adolescents. Adult children's gender role attitudes are associated with maternal gender role attitudes measured during both early childhood and midadolescence.
More than 2 decades of economic reforms have brought great improvements in the quality of life for women and girls in China. Despite these improvements, in some areas, cultural values and norms concerning gender roles and traditional family structures still influence the values attached to sons and daughters and create strong incentives for son preference (Croll 2000; Li and Lavely 2003). The most striking evidence of the priority parents place on sons is demographic: the "missing girls" phenomenon of abnormally masculine sex ratios at birth. This phenomenon has become more extreme in the economic reform period (Banister 2004).
Many researchers conceptualize the major transitions in the life course as occurring in an orderly progression. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 and its follow-ups, we find considerable disorder in nonfamily events. By the time they had been out of high school eight years, over half of the men and women in the 1972 class had sequences of states that deviated from the "normal," e.g., they returned to school or moved to a category not usually included in life-course research, such as unemployment. To what extent does this disorder matter? We answer this question with respect to the transition to parenthood. A simple measure of disorder did not uniformly affect this transition. Rather, disorder has heterogeneous effects. Particular sequences of activities, some orderly, some not, affect when people first became parents. For example, the delaying effect of education is less powerful if that education has been interrupted by work or some other activity.