Economy deferring adulthood, study says

Once upon a time, a fellow was considered a mature man at 20 — a guy with a steady job, wife and baby, a little house somewhere.

Time and attitude march on, however. Today’s twenty-somethings have become reluctant to surrender to the traditional grown-up world, according to a University of Pennsylvania study released Tuesday.

“The transition to adulthood” has been delayed, the study states. “Becoming an adult takes longer today than in previous decades, with many not achieving all the traditional markers — starting a career, forming a new household, starting a family — until after age 30.”

But these late bloomers are not necessarily wallowing in the frivolous culture of modern youth. The study contends that they are driven by the stunning competition and unstable nature of the job market.

“A demographic shift has occurred, almost without notice, but with important ramifications for the job market, the marriage market and public policy,” the study stated.

Principal researchers Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist, and demographer Elizabeth Fussell pored over U.S. Census Bureau data, charting domestic trends between 1900 and 2000 among Americans ages 16 to 30. They found an “increasingly demanding labor force” had forced those coming of age after 1970 to place job over hearth.

“As a result, they are delaying but not abandoning marriage and family,” the study states.

But it’s not easy.

The transition to adulthood “may be more problematic at the turn of the 21st century than in previous eras.”

“Compared to the relatively orderly sequence that marked adult status for many … the markers of what constitutes a successful and complete transition now seem uncertain,” the authors wrote.

“Favorable economic conditions and optimism about the future among young adults (in their late teens and early 20s) resulted in early family formation” after World War II, they found. By the mid-1970s, however, a high school diploma and an unstable job market could no longer guarantee a decent wage.

The situation has been particularly tough on young men.

“The ability to support and thus form a family has declined. In the industrialized economy of the first half of the 20th century, most men were able to attain such independence by age 20,” the study noted.

But the competitive challenges of an increasingly technical and information-based market have made “25-year-old men in all groups more likely to remain single and childless.”

Women, too, are delaying marriage in favor of more independent living while they work or attend school: The fastest-growing status among 25-year-old females is single, working, childless heads of household.

Motherhood also has been put on hold, and there have been increases among women who chose to go it alone. In 1980, 1 percent to 2 percent of white and foreign-born 30-year-old women were single mothers, rising to 6 percent in 2000. For black women, the rise went from 7 percent in 1970 to 26 percent in 2000.