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 January 2006, Vol. 12, No. 1Transitions to Adulthood Adolescence entails changes, some of them drastic, in young people’s bodies, emotions, capabilities, ways of thinking, and financial situations. Particularly for girls in the developing world, this period often fails to bring opportunities for increased autonomy. The circumstances of young people’s lives, as well as young people’s ability to meet and address the challenges they encounter as they become adults, have a direct impact on their future and the futures of their children and their country. The largest-ever generation of young people aged 10–24 is now making the transition from childhood to adulthood. One and a half billion of them—86 percent—live in developing countries. To provide a foundation of information on the lives of these young people, the U.S. National Academies published Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries in May 2005. (See Population Briefs, May 2005.) The volume detailed the findings of an expert panel—led by Cynthia B. Lloyd, Population Council director of social science research—on transitions to adulthood in developing countries. As part of its three-year information-gathering process, the panel commissioned background papers to provide more focused treatment of certain issues where existing literature was lacking. These papers informed the initial publication. Ten of these background papers were selected by the editors for publication in a companion volume, The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries: Selected Studies, which was published in December 2005. Some of the most important contributions of the volume are its essays on adolescents in China and on adolescent marriage. China has not participated in the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program—a major source of comparative data for the panel report—and other data from China were not accessible to the panel. These circumstances made this contribution particularly critical. And, while marriage as an institution has been studied, its specific effects on adolescents have garnered little attention. Adolescents in China China currently accounts for more than 20 percent of young people in the developing world, and is also one of the countries in which economic development and transformation have been occurring most rapidly in recent decades. The authors find that, on average, this market-reform period has benefited the lives of many adolescents. Schooling has increased, and adolescent labor has decreased. The average age at marriage rose in the 1990s—with the vast majority of males and females getting married after age 20—and is high for the developing world. Thus, marriage is unlikely to compete directly with educational opportunities except at the very highest levels of education. Low fertility rates suggest that women’s childrearing responsibilities in China may compete less with other opportunities than in many other developing countries. Although many of the benefits of improved standards of living have been shared across social groups, social and economic inequalities are becoming more accentuated. Wealthier urban youth are beginning to experience problems with overeating, while some rural youth still face malnutrition. Suicide rates are dramatically higher among rural adolescents and young adults—especially young rural women—than among urban youth. Wealthier adolescents and those in urban areas are more likely to attend school than their poorer rural counterparts. Finally, social changes in the reform period raise important concerns about behavioral health issues, especially smoking and sexual health. AIDS has the potential to become a staggering social problem in China if not successfully addressed in the near future. Adolescent marriage Barbara Mensch of the Population Council, Susheela Singh of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and John Casterline of Pennsylvania State University examine trends in the timing of first marriage among men and women in the developing world. They find that during the past 30 years in most developing-country regions, substantial declines have occurred in the proportion of men and women who are married during the teenage years. The clear exceptions are South America for both sexes, and West and Middle Africa and South and Southeast Asia for men only. While early marriage is declining, it is important to note that among women aged 20–24 interviewed by the DHS, one-third were still married prior to age 18. The researchers determined that scant data exist on the causes of changes in the timing of marriage, which may range from increased schooling for men and women to a transformation in global norms about the desirability of early marriage for women. The consequences of these changes for health and other outcomes are also unknown. In order to better understand the dynamics of marriage, surveys need to collect information on the social, cultural, and economic factors that affect life decisions among young people. Analyses of such data will permit the development of a more nuanced picture of one of the key transitions in the passage from adolescence to adulthood. India, like China, accounts for more than a fifth of the young people in the developing world. Shireen Jejeebhoy of the Population Council and Shiva Halli of the University of Manitoba examine changes in marriage patterns among successive age groups of women in rural Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, provinces with two culturally distinct social systems. In both provinces, marriage age has been increasing moderately but at different paces: In Uttar Pradesh early adolescent marriages (under age 15) have declined perceptibly, yet about two-thirds of recently married women had married by the time they were age 18. Among women in Tamil Nadu, in contrast, marriage is increasingly being delayed beyond adolescence. Similar factors appear to be associated with the increase in marriage age in these two settings. Education, even only at the primary level, is associated with sharply increased marital age. Compared to the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh, the Hindus of this state marry significantly earlier, while both Muslim and Hindu women from Tamil Nadu are significantly more likely to delay marriage. The research shows that while education is significantly related to older age at marriage, and while secondary education is associated with exercise of choice in marriage timing and partner, education is also related to increased dowry payments. Conversely, while premarital economic activity is unrelated to marriage age or marriage-related decisionmaking, it is significantly associated with reduced dowry payments. These findings suggest that strategies to delay marriage, enhance marriage-related decisionmaking, and counter the practice of dowry may need to expand beyond education and employment and focus on such issues as building community awareness of the negative effects of early marriage, countering fears of allowing girls to remain single, providing for the acquisition of usable vocational and life skills, and enhancing young women’s access to and control over economic resources and decisionmaking related to their life choices. Agnes Quisumbing of the International Food Policy Research Institute and Kelly Hallman of the Population Council analyze data on husbands’ and wives’ ages, education, and assets at marriage in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, the Philippines, and South Africa. In these six countries, age at marriage is increasing for husbands and wives, with the exception of Bangladesh for men and Ethiopia for men and women. In four of the countries, age differences between spouses have decreased. Differences between spouses in age at marriage have not decreased in South Africa and the Philippines, the two countries in the study where women’s ages at marriage are the highest. The amount of schooling completed before marriage has also been increasing for both men and women, except for men in Bangladesh. In three of the countries, differences in the amount of schooling received by husbands and wives have also decreased. The exceptions are Guatemala and the Philippines, where the difference in years of schooling has not changed over time, and Ethiopia, where the difference is increasing, with husbands receiving more education. Husbands’ assets at marriage have increased over time in four countries, declining only in Ethiopia and remaining constant in the Philippines. Wives’ assets at marriage have increased in Guatemala, Mexico, and South Africa, remained constant in the Philippines, and declined in Bangladesh and Ethiopia. The reduction of husband–wife gaps in age at marriage and in schooling indicates potential improvements in the balance of power within the family, but the distribution of assets at marriage continues to favor husbands. It remains to be seen whether the reductions in gender gaps in age and schooling will offset the persistent gender gaps in wealth. The studies in this volume served as vital information sources for the National Academies report on the transitions to adulthood in developing countries. They complement the report and provide useful contributions in their own right. “Our hope is that these studies will be useful to those charged with making and implementing public policy, as well as to scholars from different disciplines and leaders of civil society organizations wishing to build on the panel’s foundation,” says Lloyd. Source See Also
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