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TRANSITIONS TO ADULTHOOD For successful transitions to occur, adolescents must avoid pitfalls such as dropping out of school before a critical level of schooling has been reached, engaging in hazardous and unproductive activities, having an early marriage or unplanned pregnancy, engaging in risky sexual behavior, or getting involved with crime or drugs. The negative consequences for adolescents of succumbing to any of these pitfalls appear to be greater now than in the past, given the increasingly competitive nature of the global economy. The Population Council is undertaking a broad program of research on transitions to adulthood in developing countries directed by Judith Bruce and Cynthia B. Lloyd. The program seeks to better understand adolescents’ lives and to identify, design, and test various interventions to increase opportunities and reduce risks for adolescents, particularly girls. The ultimate goal is to allow adolescents to emerge as reproductively healthy adults with productive skills that will permit them to be full participants in work, family, and community life. This program of research focuses on adolescent reproductive behavior as well as on schooling and livelihoods. Little is known about the factors that affect the timing and prevalence of adolescent reproductive events, such as marriage, sexual intercourse, pregnancy, birth, and abortion, and even less about the individual and societal consequences of these events. The consequences of early marriage and childbearing in developing countries have been largely neglected by researchers and policymakers. A more comprehensive understanding is needed of the social and economic context of adolescents’ lives, including domestic roles and responsibilities, social and physical mobility, schooling, and work. Successful transitions to adulthood are critical to young people’s well-being and, for girls, they also affect the ability to set the terms of sexual relations, marriage, and childbearing. Population Council researchers are currently involved in collaborative research projects on the transitions to adulthood (both within and outside the Council) in seven countries—Bangladesh, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and Vietnam. These projects include a mix of methodological, descriptive, analytic, and intervention research. In addition, staff members are involved in comparative analysis as well as state-of-the-art literature reviews.
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