Beyond Transitions: Applying Optimal Matching Analysis to Life Course Research

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

Imported on 2024-05-07 21:38

⭐ Important

• & The results suggest that passages into adulthood have become more diverse since the 1970s (p. 179)
• & The concept of ‘transition’ has been a central pillar of life course research since it developed its methodology and conceptual framework (Sackmann & Wingens, 2001). In his seminal text, Elder (1985) defines transitions as ‘changes in state that are more or less abrupt’ (pp. 31–32). Transitions from youth to adulthood, and particularly the transition from school to work, have been the most intensively investigated area in this field (Bynner, 1998, 2001; Fussell, 2002; Irwin, 2000; Schoon, McCulloch, Joshi, Wiggins, & Bynner, 2001). (p. 180)
• & owever, scholars researching life course o (p. 180)
• & International Journal of Social Research Methodology 181 career sequences have used OMA with increasing frequency over recent years. (p. 181)
• & A growing body of research suggests that passages into adulthood in Britain, as in other Western nations, have become more variable since the 1960s. During the two decades following the Second World War, transitions into adult roles mostly conformed to a normatively ordered and densely timed sequence of steps from leaving school to family formation (Rindfuss, 1991; Shanahan, 2000). Social norms of the post-war years favoured early transitions into the husband-provider role for men, and into the housewife–mother role for women—leading to standardisation of young men’s and women’s trajectories (Modell, 1989). The post-war years’ extraordinary economic growth, coupled with a mood of progress-optimism (Hobsbawm, 1994), provided life chances that made these trajectories seem both attainable and desirable for many people. (p. 182)
• & Since the 1970s, however, life courses appear to have reverted to more erratic patterns (Shanahan, 2000). Several authors have argued that standardised trajectories into work and family have been broken by changing gender relations, expansion of the education system, a decoupling of educational qualifications and professions, and the increased risk of youth unemployment (Buchmann, 1989; Dewilde, 2003; Furlong & Cartmel, 1997; Hareven, 2000). Youth researchers stress that current passages into adulthood are anything but linear and irreversible processes—rather, authors describe yo-yo movements in and out of adult roles, emphasise the fuzziness of transitions, and report that young adults frequently feel an ambiguity about whether they have entered adulthood or not (European Group for Integrated Social Research, 2001; te Riele, 2004) (p. 182)
• & The notion of de-standardisation and diversification of youth–adulthood transitions remains contentious, however. It has been challenged on two accounts: first, authors have doubted whether post-war transitions were as straightforward as the argument suggests (Goodwin & O’Connor, 2005). Second, scholars rightly point to a lack of rigorous empirical evidence (Shanahan, 2000). Rindfuss (1991) has argued that although there is some evidence for increasing diversity of family formation patterns, the waters are murkier in the sphere of education and work. Nevertheless, the educational expansion and the increase in work participation among mothers with young children are well-documented (Ferri, Bynner & Wadsworth, 2003) and would suggest an increase in diversity. (p. 182)
• & Although the NCDS cohort are slightly too young to represent ‘post-war’-youth, there are reasons to assume that a trend towards diversification, if it exists, would be discernible when comparing NCDS to BCS70: there is evidence to show that the cohort studies are uniquely suited to document the changes to British society outlined above (Ferri et al., 2003; Schoon, 2006). (p. 182)
• & In particular, there is an increase in the number of distinct pathways into full-time employment: the paths via government training, and via an intermediate period of ‘return to education’ are ‘new’. Also, a small but increased minority of ‘late starters’ has a delayed entry into full-time work for reasons other than fulltime education or training. It is conceivable that some members of this ‘part-time into full-time work’ group (No. 9) were working part-time to fund part-time education. This speculation reveals a weakness of our data: at any one time point, they only record a single activity state, although in reality people can occupy a combination of statuses. (p. 190)
• & A conspicuous, although not surprising, finding is the gender difference in diversity: women’s careers are far more diverse than men’s—a result which has also been found in the USA (Rindfuss et al., 1987). (p. 190)
• & The average standardised distance of cohort members to their respective ideal types in NCDS was 0.11 (men = 0.07; women = 0.15), whereas in BCS70 it was 0.12 (men = 0.09; women = 0.15). Again, this result suggests a trend toward the de-standardisation of passages. The trend is rather weak, but considering the small temporal gap between the cohorts, it is maybe not insignificant. Our conclusions (p. 191)