Can Ambition Help Overcome Social Inequality in the Transition to Adulthood? Individual Agency and Societal Opportunities in Germany and the United States

Abstract

The regulation of human development requires the selection of developmental goals and focused investment of resources in their pursuit. Societally institutionalized and normative conceptions about developmental tasks and deadlines regulate some of this selectivity, but in modern societies with their substantial social mobility an important part is played by the individual agent. Societies and their educational systems differ in the degree to which they constrain versus facilitate upward mobility. Accordingly, individual goal setting is most effective when closely calibrated in societies with less permeable educational and vocational career paths. In contrast, goal setting that reflects high-flying ambitions is adaptive under societal conditions that offer greater permeability between educational tracks and that foster step-wise social climbing. Exemplary findings from two longitudinal studies of the transition from school to work and college and situated in two critically different societies, Germany and the United States, are discussed.

Notes

¹It should be noted that, although leaving the parental household is still typical, current economic conditions prompt some young adults to stay with their family of origin until they can economically support themselves, others return when their marriage fails, and in some countries single offspring (e.g., single sons in Italy) live with their parents well into adulthood.