Working Papers

For an index to all publications on the site, go here

These working papers have been posted to stimulate research and policy analysis on issues related to the transition to adulthood. The papers have not been formally reviewed by members of the Network. The papers reflect the views of the authors and do not represent the views of the other members of the Network or of the MacArthur Foundation.

Profiles of Young Adults

Examining Trends in Adolescent Environmental Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors across Three Decades (December 2008)
Laura Wray-Lake, Constance A. Flanagan, & D. Wayne Osgood

Concern for the environment has been declining among young people since the 1990s, according to data from Monitoring the Future, which tracks attitudes among high school seniors in the United States. Findings reveal that, with the exception of a few years in the early 1990s, the environment has not been a growing concern for young people. Declining trends in the sense of personal responsibility for the environment, conservation behaviors, and belief that resources are scarce were particularly noteworthy. Across all years, youth tended to assign responsibility for the environment to the government and consumers rather than accepting personal responsibility. These recent declines in environmental concerns signal the need for a renewed focus on young people's views and calls for better environmental education and governmental leadership. [PDF]

This paper was later published in the Journal of Enviornment and Behavior

Exploring the Changing Meaning of Work for American High School Seniors, 1976-2005 (UPDATED-- September 2009)
Laura Wray-Lake, Amy K. Syvertsen, Laine Briddell, D. Wayne Osgood, and Constance Flanagan

This paper presents changes in high school seniors' attitudes on the meaning of work during the past 30 years. Using data from Monitoring the Future, the authors find that young people are more comfortable with job flux; work has become less central to their lives; values such as hoping for a job with high prestige,with room for advancement and decent earnings, and one in which people look up to you have held steady or increased slightly; while intrinsic rewards of a job (the work is interesting, it taps skills, learn new things, see results) have declined in importance in the last 30 years. [Working Paper] [Tables and Figures]

Demographic Profile of Young Adults in the United States, 2006 (October 2007)
Rubén G. Rumbaut and Golnaz Komaie

Using 2006 CPS data, Rumbaut and Komaie provide a detailed profile of young adults, 18-34. They examine such things as how many are living at home, what types of jobs they hold, education, marital status, the growing diversity of this age group, and more. All data are presented by age group (18-24, 25-29, 30-34), as well as gender and race-ethnicity. [PDF]

Demographic Profile of Young Adults in the Five Cities (May 2007)
Rubén G. Rumbaut, Golnaz Komaie, and Charlie V. Morgan

Using 2006 CPS data, Rumbaut and colleagues have assembled a detailed profile of young adults, 18-34, in the five sites where the Network’s qualitative studies were carried out: New York, San Diego, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, and Iowa. The tables also present national and regional (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) data on living arrangements, employment, education, poverty, family and personal income, among other major adult transitions. [PDF]

Young Adults in the United States: A Profile (March 2004)
Rubén G. Rumbaut

This report sketches a profile of young adults in the United States at the turn of the century, based on an analysis of data from the 5% Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the 2000 census. The data are limited to young adults aged 18 to 34, and broken down for three age groups: 18-24, 25-29, and 30-34. The paper seeks answers to such questions as, What do we know from the 2000 census about young adults in the United States? How many have "completed" any or all of the conventional milestones marking adulthood? How many still live with their parents? How do those aged ages 18-24--in many respects the most vulnerable during this period of the life course--compare with older cohorts (ages 25-29 or 30-34)?
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A Snapshot of American High Four Decades: 1976, 1985, 1994, and 2001 (June 2006)
Constance Flanagan and D. Wayne Osgood

Drawing from their work analyzing Monitoring the Future data, Flanagan and Osgood examine how high school seniors's views have changed since the 1970s on topics such as educational aspirations, goals for life and work, views on relationships, their trust in government and other institutions, and more.
[View PDF]

See also

 

Civic Participation among Young Adults

Thirty Year Trends in American Adolescents’ Civic Engagement: A Story of Changing Participation and Educational Differences (December 2008)
Amy K. Syvertsen, Laura Wray–Lake, Constance Flanagan, Laine Briddell, & D. Wayne Osgood

This study examines trends since the 1970s in high school seniors’ civic and political beliefs and their anticipated civic participation. Findings suggest that young adults in recent years are, generally, less inclined to participate politically, yet they are increasingly drawn to activities where they can serve their communities. Throughout the period, high proportions of young people expressed intentions to vote and interest in the government and current affairs. Trust in government and elected officials was consistently low, and the variation over time was positively related to whether high school seniors have hope for the world. The authors also find strong differences by whether youth intend to go on to college; those who do are more civically engaged.
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Public Scholarship and Youth at the Transition to Adulthood (October 2006)
Constance Flanagan

This paper argues the benefits of public scholarship for young adults and for the viability of community and democracy. If the vagaries of an unpredictable job market are a fact that future generations will live with, then it is futile to make jobs the main source of personal meaning. Public scholarship reminds students that being a member of the public also is a source of meaning. It gives them reasons to care about public schools, parks, health, and welfare. It helps them see how their own (self-) interests are linked with these broader (public) goods. In public scholarship students experience what it is like to be part of something that is larger than themselves.
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Listen to interview with Network member Constance Flanagan and others discussing civic involvement with Frank Stasio, NPR
Tuesday, January 16 2007

Host Frank Stasio talks about how and why today's youth are getting involved in social issues with Constance Flanagan and Ron Kassimir, co-editors of "Youth Activism: An International Encyclopedia" (Greenwood Press/2005).  He also catches up with some local activists, who are taking unique approaches to getting their voices heard.

The Changing Social Contract at the Transition to Adulthood: Implications for Individuals and the Polity (March 2006)
Constance Flanagan, D. Wayne Osgood, Laine Briddell, Laura Wray, and Amy Syvertsen

Drawing from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study, the authors examine trends in the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of high-school seniors in the United States between 1976 – 2003. They examine patterns of stability and change in the personal meanings youth attach to work; in the material standards and consumer lifestyle to which they aspire; in their sense of comfort with change and control over their lives; in optimism about their own future and that of the world, and their feelings about becoming adults. With respect to social change and the polity, they report trends in youths’ commitment to goals that promote the common good, i.e., the importance they attach to making a contribution and being a leader in their community and of having a job where they can help others and do something worthwhile for society; their interest in current events and environmental awareness; and indicators of their participation in conventional and lifestyle politics, and volunteer work in their communities.
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Developmental Roots of Political Engagement (October 2006)
Constance Flanagan

How do youth become politically engaged? Flanagan explores this question, arguing that political engagement begins early and are rooted in their experiences as members in community institutions, and that the evolving values and world views of youth are a fruitful arena for understanding the kinds of people they are becoming and the kind of polity they will create as younger generations replace their elders in society.
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In Their Own Eyes: Young Adults' Views of the Transition

Becoming Adult: Meanings and Markers for Young Americans (March 2006)
Richard A. Settersten, Jr.

Against the protracted and ever more fragmented transition to adulthood, against patterns that suggest significant uncertainty about experiences and opportunities that lay ahead, and against longer reliance on others for support, how do young people come to think about themselves as “adults”? This paper seeks to understand young adults’ perspectives on what adulthood means, what experiences or statuses mark it, and how adult identities are achieved. The first section turns to themes of the salience and meanings of chronological age as a marker in this process, especially in getting the process started. The second section then develops a set of themes related to the gradual nature of the transition to adulthood and its implications for identity-building in early adulthood. The chapter draws on in-depth interviews with young people from all four of the settings discussed in prior chapters this book: New York City, San Diego, Minneapolis, and rural Iowa. An overview of the four samples and research designs is provided in the opening chapter.
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Straight from the Heartland: Coming of Age in Ellis, Iowa (September 2006)
Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas

Carr and Kefalas draw on their in-depth interviews with young adults in rural Iowa to weave a story of why some leave home, and often the state, why others stay, and how the role the community plays in shaping young adults lives. They find that youths' early work histories, their family, teachers and guidance counselors, and their own ambitions, abilities, and proclivities all come together to shape these decisions to leave, stay, and sometimes return. For their own lives, the decisions can mean a more traditional route through young adulthood, as demonstrated by the Stayers and their nearly lockstep path through the markers of adulthood: finishing high school, leaving home, finding a job, marrying, and starting a family, in that order. For those who leave, the decision can lead them along a more circuitous path that more closely mirrors the path taken by many young adults today, as documented by other researchers from the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood. However, as the paths themselves reveal, all of these youth, because of the many more options available to them in today’s world, and paradoxically, because of the region’s own economic and social traditionalism, pull and push them in different directions, along a variety of routes to adulthood.
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The New Adulthood? The Transition to Adulthood from the Perspective of Transitioning Young Adults ( March 2006)
Douglas Hartmann and Teresa Toguchi Swartz

What do “transitioning” young adults know and think about themselves and their lives as they move into “traditional” adult roles, those of worker, partner/spouse, and parent? Are they aware of the ways in which their experiences are different from their parents? Do they think of themselves as being in a distinct life phase or period? Do they assign any particular meaning and significance to it? What challenges and obstacles do they believe stand in their way? These are some of the questions Hartmann and Swartz explore as they draw from in-depth interviews with young adults in Minneapolis-St.Paul, Minnesota.
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Growing Up in the Big City: The Transitions to Adulthood in New York (June 2005)
Jennifer Holdaway

These excerpts from a chapter in a forthcoming Network book focus on the ways in which the high cost and low availability of housing in New York City affects the transition to adulthood. How do the high costs of housing and the tendency to remain living with family of origin affect the sense of independence and maturity among young people? How does the desire to live independently affect the other transitions to adulthood, such as marriage, completing an education, and finding full-time work? Similarly, what does the diversity of immigrant, racial, and ethnic backgrounds in New York mean for young people as they enter adulthood?
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Michigan: Making Their Way—Regret, Hope, and Identity Pursuits in Motor City
Debra M. Hernandez Jozefowicz-Simbeni, Brian Madden, Nathaniel Israel

Motor City, a mix of urban, suburban, and rural connected by a web of highways with cars and car culture tying it all together. During its boom, people from across the country and world were drawn to the Detroit and its environs for its promise of the good life, backed by a strong working class. Today, that working class and the unions that supported it are challenged. The auto industry hit a rough patch beginning in the early 1980s, when our group of young adults, now age 30, were just entering adolescence. Yet, the pull of the Big Three still exerts a strong influence on their psyches and adult work options. Therefore, we ask in this paper, In the first generation of decline in the manufacturing sector, how exactly are young adults making it in the Motor City? Perhaps more than in other sites, our respondents express regret for not pursuing higher education. Reflecting the changing times, when factory work no longer offers a solid middle-class living, the youth sometimes wish they’d had clearer goals in high school and followed through with them into college. Even those who did succeed in college were often motivated to attend to avoid the fate of their parents, who were often struggling financially. We also see more traditional gender roles (women focused on family, men on careers) during the transition to adulthood in Michigan, comparing more closely with Iowa and its rural youth than, for example, to the New York or San Diego young adults.
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Between Adolescence and Adulthood: Expectations about the Timing of Adulthood (July 2003)
Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., Sheela Kennedy, Vonnie C. McCloyd, Rubén G. Rumbaut, Richard A. Settersten, Jr.

In the period following World War II, adulthood came early to most Americans. The vast majority of Americans had assumed adult roles by their late teens or early 20s. Today, it takes much longer to make the transition to adulthood: adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends. We use opinion data from the General Social Survey, to describe contemporary attitudes about the nature and timing of this changing period of life. We find that although Americans believe that the transition to adulthood will begin in the late teens or early 20s, they have accepted that it often extends through the late 20s. The definition of adulthood that emerges from the GSS includes being financially independent, leaving home, completing school, and working full-time. Nearly half of Americans viewed marriage and parenthood, once defining markers of adulthood, as unimportant for the attainment of adult status.
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Subjective Perceptions of Adulthood among Urban Youth: Are Demographic Transitions Still Relevant? (March 2003)
Janel Benson and Frank Furstenberg, Jr.

Using data from the Philadelphia Educational Longitudinal Study (PELS), this paper examines the relative effects of specific adult-like transitions and responsibilities on urban youth’s self-perceived adulthood. First, we investigate young adult’s subjective adulthood status in addition to adult-like transitions and responsibilities at approximately age 19 and then again at age 21. Second, we examine the extent to which changes in adult-like roles and responsibilities explain changes in one’s subjective adulthood status overtime. Although we find a significant increase in the percent of young adults both crossing demographic transitions and taking on individual responsibilities over the two-year period, only changes in socio-demographic transitions significantly predict changes in self-perceived adulthood. In particular, moving out on one’s own and having a child significantly increase the odds of one perceiving herself as fully an adult. We also find that positive changes in labor market position significantly predict changes in adulthood status, but these effects are conditional on experiencing changes in other transitions as well.
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Marriage is More than Being Together: The Meaning of Marriage among Young Adults in the United States (September 2005)
Maria Kefalas, Frank Furstenberg, and Laura Napolitano

Is marriage in the United States in trouble? This paper goes beyond the confines of census and survey data to explore what young adults think about marriage. It draws evidence from a large, qualitative study sponsored by theNetwork, a diverse population of several hundred men and women in their 20s and early 30s who are currently navigating the passage to adulthood. The authors examine the ways that social class, community context, ethnic background, and gender are linked to how young adults construct their hopes and expectations for relationships, whether marriage is a likely prospect in their future, and, if so, the conditions under which they foresee entering into matrimony. Within a social world where young people do not have to marry if they want to engage in engage in sexual relations, cohabit, or bear children: what purpose does it now serve?
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The Immigrant Experience

Coming of Age in “America’s Finest City’”: Transitions to Adulthood among Children of Immigrants in San Diego (June 2005)
Linda Borgen and Rubén G. Rumbaut

These excerpts from a chapter in a forthcoming book by the Network explore how young adults in San Diego think and feel about becoming an adult. The paper focuses largely on the immigrant experience, interviewing 134 young adults, aged 23 to 27, who had immigrated to the United States before age 12 or who were U.S.-born children of immigrants. The youth included Mexican, Filipino, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Hmong, and Chinese, as well as some youth from Latin America and other Asian countries. The interviews were part of the larger Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study.
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See also select articles from a special issue of Ethnic & Racial Studies (vol 28, no. 6, Nov 2005) coedited by Network member Rubén Rumbaut, with Alejandro Portes

Table of contents (overview of entire issue with links to journal)

Select articles:
Introduction: The Second Generation and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut)

Turning Ponts in the Transition to Adulthood (Rubén Rumbaut)

Gendered Paths: Educational and Occupational Expectations and Outcomes among Adult Children of Immigrants (Cynthia Feliciano & Rubén Rumbaut)

The Multifaceted American Experiences of the Children of Asian Immigrants (Min Zhou and Yang Sao Xiong)

See also the articles in Migration Information Source :

The Economics of Early Adulthood

Constrained After College: Student Loans and Early Career Occupational Choices (May 2007)
Jesse Rothstein and Cecilia Rouse

In the early 2000s, a highly selective university introduced a “no-loans” policy under which the loan component of financial aid awards was replaced with grants. We use this natural experiment to identify the causal effect of student debt on employment outcomes. In the standard life-cycle model, young people make optimal educational investment decisions if they are able to finance these investments by borrowing against future earnings; the presence of debt has only income effects on future decisions. We find that debt causes graduates to choose substantially higher-salary jobs and reduces the probability that students choose low-paid “public interest” jobs. We also find some evidence that debt affects students’ academic decisions during college. Our estimates suggest that recent college graduates are not life-cycle agents. Two potential explanations are that young workers are credit constrained or that they are averse to holding debt. We find suggestive evidence that debt reduces students’ donations to the institution in the years after they graduate and increases the likelihood that a graduate will default on a pledge made during his or her senior year. We argue this result is more likely consistent with credit constraints than with debt aversion.
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Is the Company Man an Anachronism? Trends in Long Term Employment, 1973-2005 (May 2006)
Henry Farber (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

Farber examines changes in the incidence of long-term employment in the United States between 1973 and 2005.  He finds that, as expected, young people today can expect more churn in their careers and shorter tenures with their employers.  The decline in tenure is more pronounced for men; women’s tenures started below men’s and have remained relatively constant throughout the time period.  He finds that shifts in the nature of jobs in the U.S., an increase in college educated workers, and increased immigration have all contributed to the trend.
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To Have and To Hold: An Analysis of Young Adult Debt (September 2006)
Ngina S. Chiteji (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

Chiteji examines how much debt today’s young adults are carrying and how their debt compares to those of others in the nation and to young adults from previous generations. Somewhat surprisingly, she finds little evidence that today’s young adults are unusually debt-burdened. In fact, their debt appears remarkably similar to that of other families in the nation, and to young adults of the past.
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Young Adults Leaving the Nest: The Role of Cost-of-Living (May 2006)
Aaron Yelowitz (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

 Yelowitz examines the role that housing costs have played in the increasing numbers of young adults living with parents. He finds that, although housing and rental costs have certainly become more important to the decision to return home, they can explain perhaps 15 percent of the total change in independent living arrangements between 1980 and 2000. Transportation costs played a larger role. However, as he notes, the housing boom and skyrocketing prices did not really take off until after 2000, the year his data end.
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Health Insurance and the Transition to Adulthood
Helen Levy (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

In 2004, 30% of young adults aged 18-24 lacked health insurance. This paper analyzes the trajectories of young adults’ health insurance coverage and the reasons so many young adults experience gaps in coverage. Levy explores two possibilities: that health insurance markets suffer from adverse selection, resulting in actuarially unfair prices for this age group, or whether young adults opt out of health insurance because they have as yet a relatively weak attachment to the labor force and have not found a stable job that offers insurance yet.
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Growing Up in the Big City: The Transitions to Adulthood in New York (2005)
Jennifer Holdaway

These excerpts from a chapter in a forthcoming Network book focus on the ways in which the high cost and low availability of housing in New York City affects the transition to adulthood. How do the high costs of housing and the tendency to remain living with family of origin affect the sense of independence and maturity among young people? How does the desire to live independently affect the other transitions to adulthood, such as marriage, completing an education, and finding full-time work? Similarly, what does the diversity of immigrant, racial, and ethnic backgrounds in New York mean for young people as they enter adulthood?
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What Money Can Buy: The Relationship between Marriage and Home Ownership in the United States (2005) 
Mary Elizabeth Hughes  

Some have argued that marriage is being delayed—and even forgone—because young adults cannot afford to marry. This paper examines the connection between marriage and homeownership, using homeownership as a measure of material aspirations and economic wherewithal. Results suggest that homeownership, and by extension material aspirations, are a key part of the family formation process. Material aspirations shape people’s ideas about what is necessary for a particular life transition, for example marriage. In turn, they scale people’s assessments of their own readiness for the transition. In the case of marriage, people may assess their economic readiness for marriage in terms of their ability to afford a home.
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Labor Market Experiences and the Transition to Adulthood (May 2006)
Carolyn J. Hill and Harry J. Holzer (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

The authors find that, at least for the period 1984–2002, employment and wages explain actually very little of the trend toward living at home and delaying marriage among 20-22 year olds. Although declining wages are certainly linked to an increasing tendency of youth to live at home, it is not the only, nor a particularly strong factor driving the decision. Productive behavior in high school, as reflected in grades, few risky behaviors, and stronger future goals, tends to better explain living arrangements and marriage trends, and college attendance finds youth living at home longer—although even these factors do not help explain much of the changes.
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Family Background and Children’s Transitions to Adulthood over Time (May 2006)
Melanie Guldi, Marianne E. Page, and Ann Huff Stevens (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

The authors examine whether the importance of family background (parents’ income and education) to a young adult’s future successes has changed since the 1970s. They find that the likelihood of a successful transition to adulthood differs markedly parental family income and education, and there is little evidence that the influence of family income has changed over time. The link between parents’ education and their children’s education levels has become stronger over time. This is in marked contrast to the lack of a significant change between parental education and the next generation’s income, and is somewhat surprising given the large increases in the wage returns to schooling that took place over this period.
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Economic Conditions and the Living Arrangements of Young Adults (May 2006)
Jordan D. Matsudaira

Matsudaira uses census data from 1960 to 2000 to examine the extent to which regional changes in labor demand and wages have left young adults “priced-out” of the market for independence. He finds quite varied trends regionally in the changing tendency of youth to live at home longer. He also finds that y oung adults are more likely to live in their parental home when the labor market is in decline. The effects of the business cycle are more pronounced for adults in their early twenties rather than their late 20s, and they are more pronounced for men than women.
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Sticking Around: Delayed Departure from the Parental Nest in Western Europe (May 2006)
Katherine Newman and Sofya Aptekar (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

Looking to Europe, the authors find that employment and unemployment benefit policies that protect older workers at the expense of new entrants to the labor market make it harder for young adults to move out of their family homes. Housing markets play a key role in the pattern of home leaving as well.
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A Cross-National Survey of Trends in the Transition to Economic Independence (May 2006)
Lisa Bell, Gary Burtless, Janet Gornick, and Timothy M. Smeeding (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

Between the mid-1980s and 2000 in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, it became increasingly difficult for young men (aged 18-24) and women in their early 20s to be economically self-sufficient. Women in their late 20s and early 30s, however, saw somewhat improved prospects for economic independence, albeit they were starting from point that was well below that among men of the same age. U.S. young adults made larger gains or smaller losses in economic self-sufficiency than experienced by their counterparts in Europe.
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Early Incarceration Spells and the Transition to Adulthood (May 2006)
Steven Raphael (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

The escalating rate of incarceration in the last decade has taken its toll on young men, especially young minority men. Raphael looks carefully at how the effects of having served time on conventional measures of the transition to adulthood among young men.
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Blurring the Boundary: Changes in the Transition from College Participation to Adulthood (May 2006)
Maria D. Fitzpatrick and Sarah E. Turner (commissioned for Network book, The Price of Independence)

The face of a college student today has changed. Not only are more women in the classroom, but more students are juggling work and family, taking time out to work and save money, or beginning their college career later in life. The authors examine a few of the causes behind this changing face of college.
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Policy and Program Options for Supporting Youth as They Transition to Adulthood

Diverging Development: The Not-so-Invisible Hand of Social Class in the United States (May 2006)
Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr.

This paper calls for a closer look at social class differences in contemporary America, to more fully understand how gender and ethnicity shape social reality and social opportunities in the United States. Beyond a call to action, the paper also outlines a research agenda for examining social class in greater detail.  The central aim of the paper is to expose a series of developmental processes that work in tandem to fashion a stratification system operating from birth to maturity in this country that is pervasive, persistent, and far more powerful than we generally like to admit. The paper also argues that social scientists must begin to ask whether they are accurately describing the social and psychological worlds of most Americans, and whether they are adequately portraying how the social system is arranged to allow a small number to flourish while others with equal talents and motivations never to reach their human potential.
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Mentoring Young Adults: Network member Jean Rhodes has published several papers on the role of mentoring in young adults lives, including:

[View PDF] Understanding and Facilitating the Youth Mentoring Movement. Social Policy Report. 20 (3), 3-19. Jean E. Rhodes and David L. DuBois. (2006).

[View PDF] The protective influence of mentoring on adolescents’ substance use: Direct and indirect pathways. Applied Developmental Science. 9 (1), 31–47. Rhodes, J.E., Reddy, R., & Grossman, J. B. (2005).

[View PDF] An exploratory study of youth mentoring in an urban context: Adolescents' perceptions of relationship styles. Journal of Youth and Adolescence. (293-306). Langhout, R. D., Rhodes, J. E., & Osborne, L. (2004).

[View PDF] Natural mentors in the lives of African-American adolescent mothers: Tracking relationships over time. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 32, 223-232. Klaw, E. L., Rhodes, J. E., & Fitzgerald, L. L. (2003).

[View PDF] The test of time: Predictors and effects of duration in youth mentoring programs. American Journal of Community Psychology, 30, 199-206. Grossman, J. B. & Rhodes, J. E. (2002).

Why Focus on the Transition to Adulthood For Vulnerable Populations? (April 2004)
D. Wayne Osgood, E. Michael Foster, Constance Flanagan, Gretchen R. Ruth.

This is the introductory chapter for the volume On Your Own Without a Net: The Transition to Adulthood for Vulnerable Populations, which focuses on groups of adolescents and young adults who face the greatest challenges in the lengthening process of becoming an adult in the modern world. This introductory chapter reviews both the ways that the transition to adulthood has become longer and more difficult in the past half century and the many ways that youth in the general population remain dependent on their families for help during these years.
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