Transition to adulthood in the UK in an intergenerational context
The overarching objective of the proposed research is to provide vital information to inform our understanding of the contemporary transition from adolescence into adulthood in the U.K. within an intergenerational context. The project has three overarching aims. First, to create a comprehensive datafile detailing the sequencing of various events across four domains of people’s life that mark the transition into adulthood for different cohorts of children. The four domains that will be considered include 1) “living with parents” 2) marriage and cohabitation 3) education and 4) employment. The resulting datafile will contain detailed history of movements into and out of parental home, educational and employment histories, and marital and cohabitation histories along with a wide range of variables capturing children’s socio-economic background. Second, to use the data generated from the project to address three substantive and policy relevant research questions: (a) What does contemporary transition to adulthood look like and what are the typical patterns of transition to adulthood? (b) How does the trajectory of transition to adulthood vary by socio-economic background? (c) How does the impact of socio-economic background on the transition to adulthood vary across cohorts, gender and when accounting for education and occupation of the respondent? Third, a longer-term aim is to document and deposit the generated data with the UK Data Service and promote their use by the wider research community through the UK data archive.
Outputs
- Understanding Society Working Paper: Transition to adulthood in an intergenerational family context: a cohort and gender analysis based on Understanding Society
- Syntax for events marking the transition from childhood to adulthood for different cohorts of children in the UK.
- Blog: Young people taking longer to leave home and find work work and a partner.
