The Evolution of Within- and Cross-Country Differences in the Transition to Adulthood: A New Perspective

Theories as well as empirical studies of demographic change have stressed the emergence of a new pattern of transition to adulthood. Using a newly constructed data set that combines large cross-national samples from the Gender and Generations Survey as well as from the European Social Survey we analyse the development of four key transitions, the leaving of the parental home, the ?rst time cohabiting in a couple, the ?rst marriage and the arrival of the ?rst child and document their development over time. We start from a set of hypotheses aimed at contrasting the idea of an emerging new typical pathway, characterized by late and protracted transitions, to the idea of an ever-increasing diversity of patterns within and between countries. Particular attention is paid to the question of convergence in transition patterns by proposing a set of new methods for more precisely assessing whether it can be observed and by linking patterns of individual change within countries to those happening between countries. While the direction into which individual and cross-country divergence is happening has clear trends to it. We conclude that the idea of convergence towards a new ideal pathway to adulthood has to be discarded. Instead the emergence of a greater set of possibilities in how to transit towards adulthood tends to consistently augment individual within-country as well as cross-country differences in lifecourse patterns. Particular attention is paid to how demographic changes play out differently by gender and institutional regimes.