Delayed Asian Transitions to Adulthood

Abstract

1Important events in the transition to adulthood are examined for young men and women in six Asian societies. Broad description of the pattern of many events is followed by a detailed consideration of event-sequences among school-leaving, home-leaving and entrance to marriage. The recent Asian experience is set against recent patterns in Western societies, and broad similarities and differences are noted. In both sets of countries there is clear evidence of significant delay in the key transitional events, many of which are being pushed into the third decade of life. Also in both regions there is evidence of a high demographic density of events in the central years of transition. The standardization of individual event distributions may not be occurring in the Asian countries examined, but there is clear evidence of individuation or a rising diversity of sequences or paths taken. Suggestions are offered regarding themes for future research on Asian adulthood transitions, in light of ongoing, market-led globalization.

Keywords:

• transition to adulthood
• home-leaving
• marriage
• Asian countries

An early version of this paper was presented to the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries. An anonymous NAS reviewer provided valuable comments, as did the reviewers for this journal.

Notes

1. The authors are the national survey directors and the AYARR (Asian Young Adult Reproductive Risk) international project co-ordinator. The authors’ names are listed in alphabetical order except for the senior author.

2. See Xenos and Gultiano (1992, 2002). We are citing singulate mean ages at marriage (SMAM) calculated using two-census methods that isolate the force of nuptiality during recent inter-censal intervals.

3. For much of South-east Asia, very early marriage was not uniformly in place in the past, nor was strict parental control always in play. A more detailed exploration of these data shows an increased spread of marriage ages, especially for females (this compares with a declining spread of marriage ages in the West) but a rising spread of school-leaving ages (Xenos & Gultiano 2002).

4. The methods underlying these estimates are given in Xenos and Kabamalan (1998: appendix).

5. For more on youth survey design issues see Xenos (1997). For the country survey questionnaires see the project website (http://pisun2.ewc.hawaii.edu/ayarr).

6. We only present means when at least half of the events in the subset are actually available.

7. It is necessary to keep in mind an important constraint on this exercise that is imposed by our data. Ages were recorded in single years, so that two or even three of the events may be reported as having occurred simultaneously—during the same year of age. In this circumstance, actual sequences cannot always be known accurately, much less actual causal connections. Two events at the same age might have occurred as much as one full year apart. And, two events that occurred only one month apart (or even less) might be reported in adjacent years of age. In the analysis that follows we present patterns as they were reported including age-ties. Interpretation must be cautious in the light of this temporality problem, but we find that broad descriptive and comparative observations can be made nevertheless.

8. Among Hong Kong males 17.1 per cent reported leaving home at ages under ten. Among Philippine females 6.7 per cent reported early home-leaving.

9. In Nepal, for example, those who reported none of the events (both still in school and never in school) are counted as consistent.

10. Numbers of cases available for analysis are very much reduced in Table 7.