(No)time to grow up: changing ages of debut biographical events in Russia
Abstract
There is an opinion that today’s youth is not only in a hurry to became adults, but also refusing to obtain starting life course events that may limit freedom and that require commitment. To test this idea, we studied the ages of the onset of six major biographical events: completion of professional education, first employment, first separation from parents, first partnership (unregistered union), first marriage and birth of the first child.
We compared the behaviour of six generations of Russians born between 1930 and 1986. Our sample consisted of 5,451 people from the panel of the Russian part of the Generations and Gender Survey (2004, 2007 and 2011). We not only studied the median ages of the onset of events and presented them on the Lexis grid, but also estimated the chances of obtaining starting events using Cox regressions (event history analysis).
We found that there is no serious postponement of socioeconomic events: employment and separation from parents minimally changed their positions in the schedule of life of young generations. Completion of education has moved to a later age, but this is due to a significant increase in the number of graduates of vocational education of different levels. The age of entry into first partnership in young generations has fallen to a historic low, becoming the earliest of the demographic events. Two other demographic events – first marriage and first childbearing – indeed had been postponed by young people, especially men. Thus, our study revealed that young generations are not sabotaging transition to adulthood but they are becoming adults but according to their own life schedules and in their own time.
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References
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