21. Chiteji, “To Have and to Hold.” In this scenario, based on 2001 data, “the Tricias” refers to the bottom 20 percent of earners. Income quintile groupings are based on census data on the distribution of income for the national population at large. The top earners are those in the top 20 percent.
22. Robert Haveman and Edward N. Wolff, “The Concept and Measurement of Asset Poverty: Levels, Trends and Composition for the U.S., 1983–2001.” Working Paper (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003). Asset poverty differs from income poverty in that it measures the ability of families or individuals to tap into their assets (other than income) to cover their basic needs for three months. Assets include home equity, stocks, bonds, net worth, savings, and any other income that is unearned. Even excluding home equity in the calculation between renters and homeowners, the asset poverty rates of renters are more than double those of homeowners.
23. U.S. Census Bureau, “Housing Vacancies and Homeownership, Annual 2008” (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau, 2009), Table 17: Homeownership Rates for the United States, by Age of Householder and by Family Status: 1982 to 2008.
24. Bucks, et al., “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2004 to 2007,” Table 13, p. A-40.
25. Bucks, et al., “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2004 to 2007.” Lending Tree data show that 74 percent of young singles ages nineteen through thirty-four, 80 percent of young marrieds, and 56 percent of young families with children had savings or investments in 2007 (with a margin of error of about 10 percentage points).
26. Yoonkyung Yuh and Sherman D. Hanna, “Which Households Think They Save?” Journal of Consumer Affairs, forthcoming, as reported by Jennifer Saranow Schultz, “Young Adults May Be Saving After All,” New York Times, December 21, 2009. See also Ron Lieber, “Americans Are Finally Saving: How Did That Happen?” New York Times, “Your Money” column, December 18, 2009.
27. Patrick Wightman, Bob Schoeni, and Keith Robinson, “Familial Financial Assistance to Young Adults.” Working Brief (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, January 2010).
28. Sheldon Danziger and Cecilia Rouse, The Price of Independence.
Chapter 3
1. Young adults ages eighteen through thirty-four in 2005 constituted 34 percent of the U.S. civilian workforce. Those eighteen through twenty-four made up 13 percent of the workforce; those twenty-five through twenty-nine, 10 percent; and those thirty through thirty-four, 11 percent. Rubén Rumbaut and Golnaz Komai, “Young Adults in the United States: A Mid-Decade Profile” (Philadelphia: MacArthur Network on Transitions to Adulthood, September 2007).
2. Carolyn Martin and Bruce Tulgan, Managing the Generation Mix (Amherst, MA: HRD Press, 2006).
3. Henry Farber, “Is the Company Man an Anachronism? Trends in Long-Term Employment in the United States, 1973 to 2006,” in, The Price of Independence: The Economics of Early Adulthood, edited by Sheldon Danziger and Cecelia Rouse (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007).
4. Families and Work Institute, “Generation and Gender in the Workplace.” Issue Brief (New York: American Business Collaboration, 2002), Table 6, p. 18.
5. Cone, Inc., The Cone 2006 Millennial Cause Study (in collaboration with Amp Insights) (Boston, Cone, Inc., November 2006).
6. Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson, The Ambitious Generation: America’s Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).
7. This point is also reinforced by the recent work of John Reynolds, Michael Stewart, Ryan Macdonald, and Lacey Sischo, “Have Adolescents Become Too Ambitious? High School Seniors’ Educational and Occupational Plans.” Social Problems 53 (2006), pp. 186–206.
8. All data in the paragraph are from Lawrence Mishel, et al., The State of Working America (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2008), Tables 3.27, 4.
9. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Household Data Annual Averages, Table 8: Employed and Unemployed Full- and Part-Time Workers by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity” (Washington, DC: BLS, 2009).
10. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Occupations in the Temporary Help Services” (Washington, DC: BLS, 2007).
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements” (Washington, DC: BLS, February 2005).
12. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Table 1. Median Years of Tenure with Current Employer for Employed Wage and Salary Workers by Age and Sex, Selected Years, 1996–2006” (Washington, DC: BLS, 2007).
13. Danziger and Rouse, editors, The Price of Independence, p. 10.
14. Robert Topel and Michael Ward, “Job Mobility and the Careers of Young Men,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 2 (1992), pp. 439–479.
15. Tom Smith, “Generation Gaps in Attitudes and Values,” in On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy edited by Richard Settersten, Jr., Frank Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén Rumbaut (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
Chapter 4
1. Child Trends, “Dating.” Data Bank (Washington, DC: Child Trends, Spring 2008), available at www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/73Dating.cfm.
2. See Laura Sessions Stepp, Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both (New York: Penguin, 2007) and Kathleen Bogle, Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus (Albany: New York University Press, 2008).
3. Frank Furstenberg, What Happened to the American Family? (draft paper).
4. Michael Rosenfeld, The Age of Independence: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions and the Changing American Family (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
5. Frances K. Goldscheider and Linda J. Waite, New Families, No Families? The Transformation of the American Home (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). See also Frances Goldscheider and G. Kaufman, “Do Men ‘Need’ Marriage More than Women? Perceptions of the Importance of Marriage for Men and Women,” Sociological Quarterly 48 (2007), pp. 27–40.
6. Elizabeth Fussell and Frank Furstenberg, “The Transition to Adulthood During the Twentieth Century,” in On the Frontier of Adulthood, edited by Richard Settersten, Jr., Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén Rumbaut (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 32.
7. Andrew Cherlin, “American Marriage in the Early Twenty-first Century,” Future of Children 15 (2005), pp. 33–55.
8. Suzanne Bianchi and Lynne Casper, “American Families,” Population Bulletin 55 (December 2000), available at www.prb.org/Source/ACFAC41.pdf.
9. Wendy Manning, Monica Longmore, and Peggy Giordano, “The Changing Institution of Marriage: Adolescents’ Expectations to Cohabit and Marry.” Working Paper No. 2005-11 (Bowling Green, OH: Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, 2005). These plans vary slightly by religion (far fewer from more religious backgrounds plan to live together), and by education. Among women ages twenty-two through forty-four in 2002, roughly 69 percent with a high school degree or less had ever lived together compared with 46 percent among college-educated women. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Fertility, Family Planning, and the Health of U.S. Women: Data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth” (Hyattesville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, 2006).
10. For more information see Pamela Smock, Lynne Casper, and Jessica Wyse, “Nonmarital Cohabitation: Current Knowledge and Future Directions for Research.” Research Report 08-648 (Ann Arbor: Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, July 2008).
11. Centers for Disease Control, Advance Data No. 323. Table 3 (Atlanta: CDC, May 31, 2001).
12. The National Marriage Project, The State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America, 2007 (Piscataway, NJ: University of Virginia and Rutgers University, July 2007), available at www.uvirginia.edu/marriageprojects/pdfs/2008update.pdf.
Chapter 5
1. For 1980 data, see Daniel T. Lichter and Zhenchao Qian, “Marriage and Family in Multiracial Society” (Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, 2005), available at www.prb.org/en/Rep
orts/2004/MarriageandFamilyinaMultiracial
Society.aspx?p=1. For 2008 data, see U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2008 Annual Social and Economic Supplement, Table A1: Marital Status of People 15 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Personal Earnings, Race, and Hispanic Origin, 2008.
2. Michael J. Rosenfeld, “Young Adulthood as a Factor in Social Change in the United States,” Population and Development Review 32, no. 1 (March 2006), pp. 27–51. We combined Rosenberg’s male and female data into one figure for both sexes.
3. D’Vera Cohn and Rich Morin, “American Mobility: Movers, Stayers, Places and Reasons” (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, December 17, 2008).
4. Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (May 1973), pp. 1360–1380.
5. Ibid. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. J. G. Richardson (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).
6. Ibid.
7. Miller McPherson and Lyn Smith-Lovin, “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks Over Two Decades,” American Sociological Review 71 (2006), pp. 353–375.
8. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (New York: Little, Brown, 2009).
Chapter 6
1. Pew Research Center, “A Portrait of ‘Generation Next’: How Young People View Their Lives, Futures, and Politics.” A survey conducted in association with the Generation Next Initiative (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, January 9, 2007).
2. Ivar Frones, “Sense and Sensibility: An Essay on Changes to the Family, Life Course and Romance,” Family Today 10 (2004), pp. 12–16.
3. National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), 2007. Available at http://nsse.iub.edu.
4. Tom Smith, “Generation Gaps in Attitudes and Values,” in On the Frontier of Adulthood, edited by Richard Settersten, Jr., Frank Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén Rumbaut (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
5. Author computations, 2007 American Community Survey, U.S. Bureau of the Census. For additional data on other age groups (twenty-five through forty-nine; thirty through thirty-four) and split by gender, see Richard Settersten, Jr., and Barbara Ray, “What’s Going On with Young People Today? The Long and Twisting Path to Adulthood,” Future of Children 20 (2010), pp. 195–217.
6. For a parallel analysis of this case, see Teresa Toguchi Swartz, “Family Capital and the Invisible Transfer of Privilege: Intergenerational Support and Social Class in Early Adulthood,” New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development 119 (2008), pp. 11–24. See also Teresa Toguchi Swartz, Douglas Hartman, and Jeylan Mortimer, “Transitions to Adulthood in the Land of Lake Wobegon,” in Coming of Age in America, edited by Patrick Carr, Maria Kefalas, Jennifer Holdaway, and Mary Waters (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming).
7. Barbara Mitchell, The Boomerang Age: The Transition to Adulthood in Families (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Books, 2008).
8. Rubén Rumbaut and Golnaz Komaie, “Immigration and Adult Transitions,” Future of Children 20 (2010), pp. 43–66.
9. Rubén Rumbaut and Golnaz Komaie, “Young Adults in the United States: A Midcentury Update” (Philadelphia: Network on Transitions to Adulthood, 2006). See also Rubén Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of Immigrant Second Generation in Early Adulthood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
10. Katherine Newman and Sofya Aptekar, “Sticking Around: Delayed Departure from the Parental Nest in Western Europe,” in The Price of Independence: The Economics of Early Adulthood, edited by Sheldon Danziger and Cecilia Rouse (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007).
11. Lisa Belkin, “When Children Leave,” New York Times, September 17, 2008 (online: Life’s Work column), available at http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2008/09/18/fashion/
18Work.html.
12. Mark Courtney and Darcy Hughes Heruing, “The Transition to Adulthood for Youth ‘Aging Out’ of the Foster Care System.” In D. Wayne Osgood et al., On Your Own Without a Net: The Transition to Adulthood for Vulnerable Populations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Mark Courtney et al., The Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth: Outcomes at Ages 23 and 24.” Report. (Seattle and Chicago: Partners for Our Children, and Chapin Hall Center for Children, April 2010).
Chapter 7
1. Peter Levine, Connie Flanagan, and Richard Settersten, Jr., “Civic Engagement and the Changing Transition to Adulthood” (Washington, DC: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, January 2009), available at www.civicyouth.org/?p=327.
2. But even for volunteering, the levels are not terribly high—from 44 percent in the 1970s to 50 percent in the 2000s. Ibid.
3. Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilimbergo, “Growing Up in a Recession.” NBER Working Paper No. 15321 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009).
4. An estimated twenty-three million Americans under the age of thirty voted in 2008, or between 4 and 5 percentage points higher than in 2004, and an 11 percentage point gain over 2000. Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), “Young Voters in the 2008 Presidential Election.” Fact Sheet (Washington, DC: CIRCLE, December 1, 2008).
5. Of course, this number is also based on registered voters and doesn’t include those who are eligible but not registered, which makes the true turnout far lower than half. Depending on the data source (National Election Pool exit polls, Current Population Survey), and on the equation used to generate the estimate, the rate for 2008 was somewhere between 49 and 53 percent. For more information, see CIRCLE, “Young Voters in the 2008 Presidential Election.”
6. This seems at odds with our prior finding that people in their late twenties and thirties tend to be more scornful of politicians than those who are in their late teens and early twenties. Yet, as we will later show, the voting rates of most generations, even those whose rates have started relatively low, have eventually increased by the time they are in their early thirties—at least for major presidential elections. This is taken to be a sign of finally “settling in”—of paying significant taxes, buying homes and having children (and therefore developing new commitments to communities and schools), and the like. That is, delays in the traditional markers of adulthood therefore bring delays in civic commitments. Still, the voting rates of current cohorts of young adults are, despite the hoopla, lower than ever before.
7. Institute of Politics, “Fifteenth Biannual Youth Survey on Politics and Public Service” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Institute of Politics, October 2008).
8. According to a CIRCLE study, about 13 percent of young people can be classified “hyperinvolved,” claiming ten or more (out of nineteen) different kinds of participation. At the other end are the disengaged—58 percent—who are unable to cite even two forms of civic or political participation. Of these, 28 percent (17 percent overall) have done none of them. Mark Lopez, et al., “The 2006 Civic and Political Health of the Nation” (Washington, DC: CIRCLE, October 2006).
9. Constance Flanagan, D. Wayne Osgood, Laine Briddell, Laura Wray, and Amy Syvertsen, “The Changing Social Contract at the Transition to Adulthood: Implications for Individuals and the Polity” (Philadelphia: Network on Transitions to Adulthood, March 2006).
10. Institute of Politics, “Fifteenth Biannual Youth Survey.”
11. CIRCLE/Carnegie Corporation of New York, “The Civic Mission of Schools” (New York: Carnegie Corporation, 2003).
12. W. Lance Bennett, “Changing Citizenship in a Digital Age.” In Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, edited by W. Lance Bennett (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), p. 5.
13. Amy K. Syvertsen, Laura Wray-Lake, Constance Flanagan, Laine Briddell, and D. Wayne Osgood, “Thirty-Year Trends in American Adolescents’ Civic Engagement: A Story of Changing Participation and Educational Diffe
rence” (Philadelphia: Network on Transitions to Adulthood, 2008).
14. Michael Xenos and Kirsten Foot, “Not Your Father’s Internet: The Generation Gap in Online Politics,” in W. Lance Bennett, editor, Civic Life Online.
15. Institute of Politics, “Fifteenth Biannual Youth Survey”; National Survey of Student Engagement, “Promoting Engagement for All Students: The Imperative to Look Within” (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2008).
16. Allison Fine, “Social Citizens” (Washington, DC: Case Foundation, 2008).
17. CIRCLE, 2008 Civic Health Index (Washington, DC: CIRCLE, 2009).
18. See Joseph E. Kahne and Ellen Middaugh, “Democracy for Some: The Civic Opportunity Gap in High School,” in Policies for Youth Civic Engagement, edited by James Youniss and Peter Levine (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, in press).
19. National Conference on Citizenship, in association with CIRCLE and Saguaro Seminar, “America’s Civic Health Index: Broken Engagement” (Washington, DC: National Conference on Citizenship, 2006).
Chapter 8
1. Patrick Wightman, Bob Schoeni, and Keith Robinson, “Familial Financial Assistance to Young Adults.” Working brief (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, January 2010).
2. Peter Gosselin, High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families (New York: Basic Books, 2009).
3. Readers interested in cross-national perspective on differences in the protections and services offered to young people by governments can see Richard A. Settersten, Jr., “Social Policy and the Transition to Adulthood: Toward Stronger Institutions and Individual Capacities,” in On the Frontier of Adulthood: Theory, Research, and Public Policy, edited by Richard Settersten, Jr., Frank Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén Rumbaut (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
4. Frank Furstenberg, Jr., editor, “Early Adulthood in Cross-National Perspective,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (London: Sage Publications, 2002); Settersten, et al., editors, On the Frontier of Adulthood.
Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone Page 28
