Coming of Age in Times of Change

Abstract

This article aims to (1) describe trends for Chinese young adults’ pathways into adulthood for birth cohorts that have experienced distinct historical events over the past half century and (2) examine factors that shape young adults’ transitioning behavior. We draw data from the 2005 to 2008 Chinese General Social Survey. In contrast to the increasingly protracted trend seen in many Western societies, the more recent Chinese cohorts transitioned to marriage and parenthood sooner than those who grew up during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The economic and education reforms since the late 1970s have greatly increased urban-rural disparity in youths’ life trajectories despite their generally positive impact on young adults’ educational attainment and economic well-being. While near-universal marriage and childbearing within marriage prevail and son preference remains strong in modern China, evidence suggests that today’s young Chinese are exploring new pathways to adulthood, including cohabitation and premarital sex.

Keywords

transition to adulthood China cohort analysis

In the past decade, scholars in the United States have observed that “early adulthood” has emerged as a distinct stage of life as adolescence has protracted, and economic and psychological autonomy appears to take most young people of current generations longer to achieve than it did a half century ago (Booth, Crouter, and Shanahan 1999; Arnett 2000; Settersten, Furstenberg, and Rumbaut 2005; Berlin, Furstenberg, and Waters 2010; Furstenberg 2010; Settersten and Ray 2010). Main characteristics of these changes include the longer period of time in school, later age at marriage, and more young people living at home with their parents into their late 20s. The entry into adulthood also has become more complex and variable, differing greatly by gender, race, ethnicity, and social class (Settersten, Furstenberg, and Rumbaut 2005; Fussell, Gauthier, and Evans 2007; Settersten and Ray 2010). Major forces identified in the literature that shaped these trends include lengthened schooling, increased labor force participation for women, greater geographic mobility, rising living costs, a more individualistic ideology, a more volatile labor market, and an increasingly globalized economy.

Similar trends may have occurred in other parts of the world. It is now recognized that distinct life stages are created and culturally defined (Arnett and Tanner 2006). Young adulthood must be understood in its unique socioeconomic, demographic, cultural, and policy contexts. Given a dearth of studies in the non-Western context, it is useful to provide a comparative view of how young adults’ experiences differ in a socialist society that has undergone unique demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural transformations. This article examines how Chinese young adults’ life course transitions have been shaped by social experiments and constantly changing state policies as China moved from a Communist regime to a socialist society “with Chinese characteristics.” Major historical landmarks in modern China include the Great Leap Forward and the Great Chinese Famine, both of which occurred between 1958 and 1962; the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976; economic reforms, which began in 1978; the one-child policy initiated in 1979; various reforms in marriage and labor laws and the education system; and the more recent rapid economic and social transformations. These unique historical circumstances have created different constraints and opportunities for the life trajectories of different cohorts of young Chinese. We focus on five birth cohorts, each experiencing rather distinct historical periods as they move from adolescence to adulthood. We examine trends in the tempo and sequence of Chinese youths’ school completion and entry into the labor market, marriage, and parenthood and attempt to understand the driving forces behind them.

In China, the population aged 19 to 26 had nearly tripled from about 70 million in the early 1950s to 202 million in 1990; it then declined to 158 million in 2000 (see Figure 1). This age group in 2000 accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s young adult population and could potentially exert profound influence on the prospects of world development.¹ Since the Chinese Communist Party took over, China has experienced some of the most dramatic and largest-scale social and economic experiments in modern history, which may have long-lasting influences on human development. Contemporary China thus is an ideal laboratory for studying how structural and ideological factors intersect to shape young adults’ life trajectories.

Figure 1

Size and Percentage of Population Aged 19 to 26, by Year

Early adulthood in China may be very different from that in Western societies because of the greater cultural emphasis in China on marriage and obligation to family members (Nelson and Chen 2007), and because of the large-scale social experiments aimed at changing family and gender ideologies under the socialist regime. Studies have shown that there is a greater emphasis on family assistance, support, and respect among individuals in Chinese societies as compared to those in other societies (Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). Chinese families have continued to emphasize one’s obligations to family when socializing their children, due to the influence of Confucian teachings and the patriarchal clan system (Hwang 1999).

With regard to criteria for becoming an adult, research shows that Chinese young people ascribe greater importance than Americans do to factors that reflect obligations toward others, such as role transitions, norm compliance, family capacities, and relational maturity (Fuligni and Zhang 2004; Badger, Nelson, and McNamara Barry 2006). Chinese tradition prescribes near-universal marriage and childbearing within marriage. It is not only customary for everyone to be married, but it is important for couples to have children. Son preference is also prevalent in Chinese culture (Banister 2004; Das Gupta et al. 2003; Das Gupta 2006, 2010). These cultural preferences are likely to influence people’s attitudes toward their transition to adulthood and potentially their behaviors. In addition, state policies such as social and economic reforms and family planning programs will affect emerging adults.

Hannum and Liu (2005) examine adolescents’ transition to adulthood in reform-era China, from the Chinese Communist regime to the early economic reform years. They show that market reform has benefited many adolescents in terms of education and living standards, but inequalities, particularly between urban and rural residents, continue to mark young people’s life trajectories. Comparing urban and rural youths, the former are more likely to remain in school longer whereas the latter are more likely to enter the labor market earlier, either engaging in agriculture or migrating to cities to work.

Other researchers have examined how state policies and laws have affected marriage patterns. The Chinese government increased the minimum age at marriage to 18 for females and 20 for males in its 1950 marriage law. Arranged marriage was abolished and polygamy was outlawed. Around 1930, the mean age at first marriage for Chinese women was about 17.5 years (Coale 1989). There was a gradual increase in the 1940s and 1950s to 18.5 and 19 years, respectively, followed by a more rapid increase to about 20 in 1970 and 23 in 1980. But the trend has not always been upward. In the 1980s, a new marriage law raised the age of legal marriage to 20 and 22 for females and males, respectively. This was, nevertheless, accompanied by a marriage boom partly due to improved economic well-being. Mean age at marriage fell from 23.1 in 1979 to 22.7 in 1982 (Coale 1989). The government policy at that time was to encourage late marriage, long birth intervals, and fewer children. Women were encouraged to postpone marriage until 23 in rural areas and 25 in urban areas. Permission to marry from the couple’s work units (Danwei) was required. Estimates of the singulate mean age at marriage (SMAM)—the average number of years lived in the single state by those who marry prior to age 50—show that the SMAM dropped from 24.9 to 23.9 for men and from 22.4 to 22.0 for women between 1982 and 1987, and then rose again to 24.5 for men and 22.8 for women in 1997 (Hannum and Liu 2005).

First birth interval is also found to have shortened considerably after the 1970s, dropping from around 34 months in the 1950s to less than 18 months in the 1980s. Scholars have noted that this may have been propelled by transformation in the marriage system, expansion of formal education and nonfamilial employment, and change in young couples’ sexual behavior, all of which were largely assisted by the socialist state government either intentionally or unintentionally (Wang and Yang 1996). The family planning program widely disseminated knowledge about sexuality, which may have to some extent encouraged sexual activity among young couples and thus potentially shortened their first birth interval.

Work examining more recent cohorts’ behavior is limited, however. Cohorts have been used as a useful analytical tool to study the effect of watershed events on individuals’ life experiences, or the link between state policies and the life course. It has long been noted that changing contents of formal education, peer-group socialization, and historical experience can shape life courses of successive birth cohorts in different ways (Ryder 1965). Previous research has examined how the life chances of Chinese relate to major social change and state policies such as the Chinese Communist Revolution, Household Registration (Hukou) System, the Cultural Revolution, and post-1978 economic reform (Chen 1999; Gold 1991; Deng and Treiman 1997; Hung and Chiu 2003; Meng and Gregory 2002; Zhou and Hou 1999). We apply the birth-cohort approach to examine young adults’ transition trajectories to adulthood in China, including the more recent cohorts that have experienced rapid economic growth and social transformation. We compare experiences and attitudes of birth cohorts that have existed in different historical contexts during their late adolescent and early adult years to better understand how the life courses of young Chinese in different periods of time have been influenced by the specific social-economic contexts in China.

Historical Contexts during Transition Years for Birth Cohorts

We examine multiple birth cohorts that were born between 1936 and 1985, dividing them into five birth cohorts, each representing a group growing up in different political/policy contexts and during different major historical events that could shape young people’s lives. These cohorts and the historical contexts that they grew up in are described below and in Table 1.

Table 1

Definition of Cohorts

Cohort	Birth Year	Year Aged 15	Year Aged 26	Historical Background during Transitioning Years
1	1936–1945	1951–1960	1962–1971	Early Communist years:
				1950 Marriage Law (male: 20; female: 18); 1958 Household Registration System; 1958–1962 Great Leap Forward and Great Famine; Women hold up half the sky
2	1946–1955	1961–1970	1972–1981	Cultural Revolution:
				1966–1976 Cultural Revolution; 1968 “send down” began; basic education expanded; higher education institutions closed
3	1956–1965	1971–1980	1982–1991	Early reform:
				1978 Deng came to power, college entrance exam resumed, economic reform started; 1979 one-child policy; 1980 new marriage law (male: 22; female: 20)
4	1966–1975	1981–1990	1992–2001	Mid-reform:
				1986 nine-year compulsory education law; early period of economic reform
5	1976–1985	1991–2000	2002–2011	Rapid growth and globalization:
				Large-scale and deepened economic reform; higher education expansion; rising housing prices; 2001 WTO member; globalization

Early Communist years cohort

The oldest cohort, born between 1936 and 1945, experienced their transitioning years during the post-revolution and early communist years. As Mao attempted to promote gender equality, some remarkable changes in Chinese women’s status occurred, as the slogan “women hold up half of the sky” suggests. The 1950 marriage law set the minimum legal age for marriage at 20 for males and 18 for females and granted women the right to own land, choose their partners, and divorce. This had a significant impact on the average age at marriage, which had historically been very early. During this period of time, women’s education and labor force participation increased significantly.

However, it was also during this time that the seeds of increased social inequality between urban and rural China were planted. In 1958, the Chinese government started instituting a discriminatory household registration system (hukou system) that divided the country into nonagricultural and agricultural populations. This system allowed the Chinese Communist Party to maintain a minority welfare state in the urban areas (about 10 percent of the population at the time) while leaving rural residents to fend for themselves without a social safety net. This system has far-reaching implications for the life chances of individuals and their descendants since hukou status was assigned at birth according to the status of one’s parents. As such, it has become the most important social stratification mechanism in China that has created striking differences between residents in urban and rural areas.

Between 1958 and 1962, when the first cohort of our sample was in their 20s, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward campaign, which aimed to transform China from an agrarian society to a Communist-industrial society. The Great Leap Forward resulted in one of the largest famines in human history, causing an estimated 30 to 45 millions deaths (Ashton et al. 1984; Becker 1996; Dikötter 2010) and preventing another 30 million babies from being born due to disrupted family formation behavior (Ashton et al. 1984). The oldest group in this cohort also experienced the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

Cultural Revolution cohort, the “lost generation”

The second birth cohort in our sample, born between 1946 and 1955, spent their late adolescent and early adulthood years in the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. Starting in 1968, Mao forced many “young intellectuals,” mostly high school and middle school graduates, out of the cities and into the countryside to be “reeducated” by the peasants, because he perceived academic institutions to be bourgeois (Bernstein 1977; Zhou and Hou 1999). For this group, education and family formation were severely disrupted. Admissions to college undergraduate and graduate programs stopped for 6 and 12 years, respectively, and only a limited number of students were allowed to enter college based on political selection criteria (Tsang 2000). This cohort is often referred to as the “lost generation” because most of them grew up in turmoil and many lost the opportunity to receive proper education, get married, or have children (Hung and Chiu 2003). Young adults who grew up during this period were likely to have started working early, but were considerably delayed in or even forewent getting married and becoming parents.

Early economic reform cohort

The third cohort, born between 1956 and 1965, entered adolescence and young adulthood as the Cultural Revolution was ending and Deng was coming to power to start the economic reforms of the late 1970s. Higher education was resumed and the one-child policy was initiated. The marriage law was revised again in 1980, increasing the legal age of marriage to 20 for females and 22 for males.

Mid–economic reform cohort

The fourth cohort, born in 1966 to 1975, spent their transitioning years in the late 1980s and the 1990s when economic reform deepened. This is a period of “returning to normalcy” that followed turbulent historical events with significant improvements in Chinese people’s economic well-being. As a result of economic reform, poverty rates declined dramatically from 65 percent in 1981 to about 33 percent in 1986, as measured by the World Bank’s poverty standard of a dollar-a-day.² The government continued to invest in the education system. In 1986, the Nine-Year Compulsory Education Law was passed. As part of major changes in the public finance system and the provision and financing of education, health care has been decentralized and increasingly privatized since the 1980s, resulting in more inequality in access to social services. Also during this time, factory jobs in the new manufacturing industries in the coastal areas started to draw young people into cities to work.

Rapid economic growth and globalization cohort

The youngest cohort, born between 1976 and 1985, grew up, many as single children due to the one-child policy, during a period of rapid economic growth and social transformation in the mid-1990s through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Private enterprises took off in earnest while state-owned enterprises started laying off millions of workers. Higher education expanded dramatically, especially after the 1999 college expansion policy. A consequence of this expansion is that college graduate unemployment rates have increased in recent years.³ Rural to urban migration increased at a faster rate. As social safety nets in urban areas continue to become privatized, out-of-pocket costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb, posing significant challenges to young people in China, particularly those with rural hukou status. As China’s economy becomes increasingly open, this cohort of Chinese youths is also increasingly exposed to Western lifestyles, ideas, and values. By 2006, the oldest of the single child generation started to enter marriage and childbearing age. Unfortunately, available data do not allow us to observe fully the trajectory to adulthood for this cohort because the majority of them were still in their 20s at the time of the survey.

Methods

Hypotheses

Given the different historical life circumstances, we expect to see distinct trajectories across cohorts as young Chinese transitioned to adulthood. The earlier two cohorts that experienced turbulent historical events, especially the Cultural Revolution cohort, would have completed schooling earlier and had their family formation behavior considerably delayed. Youths who grew up after the market reform would have an overall improved educational attainment and an earlier onset of family formation as lives had returned to normal and the traditional Chinese family values prevailed. However, the combination of privatization and the hukou system would have created increasingly divergent life trajectories for youths of urban and rural origins and among those with different family backgrounds. For the most recent cohort, the rapid urbanization and globalization would have led to an increasing demand for higher education, a delay in marriage and childbearing, and an increase in sexual behavior before marriage. However, near-universal marriages and childbearing within marriage are likely to remain predominant social norms in China.

Data and sample

Analysis in this article is based on pooled data from the 2005, 2006, and 2008 waves of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS). This study covers households in both rural and urban areas in thirty provinces/districts (excluding Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau). The 2005 and 2006 waves each cover about ten thousand households and the 2008 wave covers six thousand households. The study collects data on basic socioeconomic and demographic information for respondents and family members, including family composition, education, ethnicity, health, and psychological well-being, as well as community administration data for the residence where the respondent resided at the time of the interview. These data allow us to examine trends of pathways to adulthood among subgroups of the population across birth cohorts.

We include those who were born between 1936 and 1985 in the analyses and at least 22 years of age and older. Our sample size is 24,286. In the analyses on transitioning to different markers of adulthood, we restrict the sample to those who were age 30 and above. Because of the unique historical contexts noted above, we created five birth cohorts based on individuals’ year of birth, representing those who were born in 1936–1945, 1946–1955, 1956–1965, 1966–1975, and 1976–1985 (see Table 1). When describing trends of educational attainment, or age at first marriage or birth, we use a more detailed ten-category cohort variable to show the trends in greater detail.

Analytic strategy

First, we describe the characteristics of the sample by gender and hukou origin. Then, we show trends for education attainment; timing for entry into labor market, marriage, and parenthood; and related attitudes. Finally, we conduct event history analysis, using Cox proportional hazard models and logistic regression models to estimate the impact of factors that affect markers for Chinese youths’ transitioning to adulthood. We also attempted a discrete time model, and the results were not qualitatively different.

Dependent variables

We use a set of variables to characterize the tempo and sequence of young adults’ transitioning to adulthood. Markers of adulthood include the timing when the respondents completed schooling, entered the labor force, entered marriage, and the onset of parenthood. For education attainment, we also examine the years of schooling, whether they completed high school (including vocational and academic), and whether they attended college by age 22. Five dichotomized variables are used to indicate whether, by age 30, an individual had completed schooling, started working, became married, and had a child.

Independent and control variables

Our main independent variable is the birth cohort, represented as multiple dichotomized variables. Factors that are relevant to shaping young adults’ transition to adulthood are included in the analyses. Family background, measured by hukou origin; ethnicity (Han = 1); father’s education, occupation, and whether respondent’s father is a Communist Party member (representing a family’s political capital); and region (east, central, or west) are included in the models. Father’s education is represented by a categorical variable with three groups: illiterate and primary school, junior middle school, and high school and above. Gender and family size are also controlled for. As gender and hukou status are two key factors in the Chinese contexts, we compare male to female and youths who have urban hukou origin to rural hukou origin in our descriptive statistics. In addition, as we expect an interaction effect between gender and hukou status, a multiplicative term is included in the model to capture this potential interaction. Respondents’ education level, a categorical variable representing three levels—illiterate and primary, junior middle and high school, and junior college and above—is controlled for when family formation behavior is examined.

Results

Table 2 presents the weighted descriptive statistics for the analytic sample by gender and hukou origin. The mean age of the sample is 44. Males account for about half of the sample. Eight percent of the sample are members of non-Han ethnicity minority groups, and 27 percent had an urban hukou origin. Those of urban hukou origin were from families with higher socioeconomic statuses and were better educated than those with a rural hukou origin. Males had higher education than females.

Table 2

Descriptive Statistics for the Characteristics of the Sample

	All Respondents		By Hukou and Gender
	N	Weighted Mean	Rural Females	Rural Males	Urban Females	Urban Males
Demographic variables
Age	24,286	43.8	41.8	44	40.8	41.2
		(0.1)	(0.17)	(0.2)	(0.22)	(0.25)
Cohort
1936–1945	24,286	0.11	0.06	0.1	0.05	0.06
		(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
1946–1955	24,286	0.21	0.18	0.22	0.16	0.17
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
1956–1965	24,286	0.25	0.25	0.24	0.28	0.27
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
1966–1975	24,286	0.27	0.32	0.27	0.3	0.28
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
1976–1985	24,286	0.16	0.19	0.17	0.22	0.22
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Male	24,286	0.48	0	1	0	1
		(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
Education
Illiterate and primary	24,266	0.41	0.56	0.39	0.14	0.11
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Junior middle and high school	24,266	0.51	0.41	0.55	0.68	0.68
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Junior college and above	24,266	0.08	0.03	0.06	0.18	0.2
		(0)	(0)	(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Years of schooling	14,998	7.33	5.64	7.35	9.98	10.35
		(0.04)	(0.07)	(0.06)	(0.1)	(0.09)
Family and socioeconomic background
Ethnicity (Han = 1)	24,286	0.92	0.92	0.91	0.95	0.95
		(0)	(0)	(0.01)	(0)	(0)
Hukou origin (Urban = 1)	20,994	0.27	0	0	1	1
		(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)	(0)
Region
Eastern	24,286	0.38	0.34	0.34	0.47	0.45
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Central	24,286	0.37	0.4	0.39	0.34	0.34
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Western	24,286	0.25	0.26	0.27	0.2	0.21
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Father’s education
Illiterate and primary	23,672	0.78	0.83	0.84	0.53	0.57
		(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Junior middle school	23,672	0.14	0.12	0.12	0.25	0.23
		(0)	(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.01)
High school and above	23,672	0.09	0.05	0.05	0.21	0.21
		(0)	(0)	(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)
Father’s party membership	24,187	0.11	0.09	0.09	0.22	0.19
		(0)	(0)	(0)	(0.01)	(0.01)

NOTE: Standard errors in parentheses.

The average number of years of formal schooling was 7.3 years with a large urban-rural gap. Urban males had about 10.4 years of formal schooling, urban females 10 years, rural males 7.4 years, and rural females only 5.6 years. Whereas 11 percent of urban males and 14 percent of urban females had only primary or less education, 39 percent of rural males and about 56 percent of rural females had similar educational levels. About one in five urban youths, as opposed to only 6 percent of rural males and 3 percent of rural females, received education at the level of junior college and above.

In terms of family background, about half of the urban fathers, as opposed to four-fifths of rural fathers, had primary school education or less. One fifth of urban females and males, as opposed to about 5 percent of rural females and males, had fathers who had high school education and above. More than twice as many respondents of urban hukou origin had a father who was a Communist Party member than those of rural hukou origin (19–21 percent vs. 9 percent).

Education

CGSS data show a clear upward trend of education attainment for all four subgroups over the past five decades, although the urban-rural gap has increased in high school and college education. In the rural area, the average completed years of schooling increased from 3–5 years to 8–9 years, while for urban males and females, it increased from 6–9 years to about 13–14 years for the youngest cohort born in the 1980s (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Years of Schooling, by Birth Cohort and Hukou Origin

The gender gap in both urban and rural areas has become narrower over time, especially in the urban areas where males’ and females’ completed schooling are almost indistinguishable after the 1945 birth cohort that started attending school during the early Communist years when gender equality was promoted. For the latest cohort, male and female levels are in parity.

High school completion and college attendance rates have also increased over time but with a growing inequality between urban and rural youths after the economic reform. Figure 3 shows the trend in the college attendance rate. About a quarter of urban males born in 1936–1940, compared to less than 5 percent for urban females and rural male and females, had attended college (including junior colleges), reflecting that higher education was a privilege for urban elite males in the early years. This gap decreased for those who had spent their transitioning years during the Cultural Revolution. One can also observe the declining trend during the Cultural Revolution when most colleges were closed. After the economic reform, the urban/rural gap increased again. The magnitude of inequality is even more pronounced at the high school level. There was a rapid increase for urban males and females after the large-scale privatization and marketization of the 1990s, which made higher education unattainable for many in rural areas. The college expansion policy since 1999 greatly improved the chances of attaining higher education for those born after the 1980s, especially for those of urban hukou origin. As a result, among those born between 1981 and 1985, about 45 percent of urban males and females attended college, whereas about only 11–12 percent of their rural counterparts did so. In fact, college attendance rates did not increase for rural males born after the 1970s, while chances for rural females increased to a level in parity with rural males.

Figure 3

Percentage Attended College, by Hukou, Gender, and Cohort

Transition tempo

Next, we show the Kaplan-Meier survival graphs to compare the tempo of transitioning into events that mark adulthood across the birth cohorts. Logrank tests indicate that the survival curves are significantly different across cohorts for all four transitioning events, including finishing schooling, entering the labor market, getting married, and becoming a parent.

Figure 4 shows the percentage of individuals who had not completed schooling by a specific age. Across birth cohorts, young people stayed in school for an increasingly longer time. By age 18, about 20 percent of the first two cohorts, and 30 percent of the third and fourth cohorts, compared to 40 percent of the youngest cohort had not completed their education. Between ages 15 and 21, the 1946–1955 cohort sped up in completing education, probably because of the severe disruptions in the education system during the Cultural Revolution and because a large group returned to school afterward. By age 24, most people had completed schooling. For the youngest cohort, a minority group continued to pursue education until age 30 and beyond.

Figure 4

Percent Completed Schooling, by Age and Birth Cohort

For the analysis on entrance into the labor market, we include those who started their first job in full-time farming. The 1946–1955 cohort started working earlier than the other cohorts, reflecting the consequences of the Cultural Revolution on young adults’ life trajectories (data not shown due to space constraints). The youngest cohort started working at a later age, relative to the other cohorts. By age 22, however, a great majority of all birth cohorts had started their first job.

Transition to marriage

To examine family formation behavior, we restrict the sample to those who had reached age 30 at the time of the interview. For the following sections, the youngest cohort, born between 1976 and 1985, is excluded because many of them were not yet of age to form a family.

Figure 5 shows the percentage of individuals who had not married at a specific age across cohorts. We see that age at marriage became later over time, as expected, because of the marriage law and longer schooling time. The oldest cohort had the earliest start and the least concentrated marriage pattern (a flatter curve), with about one third of the cohort married by age 20 and 70 percent married by age 24. For those who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, about 40 percent had remained unmarried by age 24, though between the ages of 24 and 25 many had caught up and married, as reflected in a sharp decline to 28 percent for those who had not been married by age 25. The third cohort had a later start than the fourth cohort, but sped up subsequently (a sharper curve), with 17 percent married by age 20, and about 80 percent married by age 25—indicative of the influence of stricter family planning policies promoting later marriage. The median ages at marriage for each cohort were 22, 24, 23, 23, and 24, respectively. There exist large gender and urban/rural differences, with females and those with rural origin marrying significantly earlier than their counterparts.

Figure 5

Percentage Married by Age and Birth Cohort

In contrast to the rapidly declining marriage rate in many East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, by age 35 almost everyone in China had already been married regardless of cohort, reflecting the norm that marriage and family are highly valued in China. An examination of the attitudinal data in CGSS reveals that about 30 to 40 percent of respondents “completely agree,” “strongly agree,” or “agree” that a bad marriage is better than singlehood, with a declining trend from 40 percent among the oldest cohort to 32 percent among those born from 1976 to 1988.

Transition to parenthood

Figure 6 presents the proportion of individuals in each cohort who had not had a child by a specific age. It shows that the timing of having the first child became more concentrated over time. The general trend is that the younger cohorts started parenthood slightly later. By age 20, 88 percent in the eldest cohort, compared to 92 percent in the youngest cohort, had not had a child yet. By age 25, 50 percent of the eldest cohort, compared to 60 percent in the youngest cohort, had had their first child. By age 30, about 80 to 90 percent in the more recent cohorts, as opposed to 95 percent in the youngest cohort, had had a child already. This again shows the effect of social-political turmoil and subsequent return to normalcy on the life course trajectories across cohorts. The median ages at first birth for each cohort were 26, 26, 25, 24, and 25, respectively. Again, there are large gender and urban/rural differences as seen in marriage behavior.

Figure 6

Those Who Entered Parenthood by Age and Birth Cohort (Percentage)

The 2006 CGSS data also provide some insights into people’s attitudes related to childbirth (data not shown in graphs due to space constraint). The majority of respondents considered it important to have a child within a marriage. Only a small proportion of the respondents, irrespective of cohort or demographic subgroups, were supportive of marriage without a child. Specifically, 3 percent of urban females, 9 percent of urban males, 8 percent of rural females, and 5 percent of rural males from the eldest cohort strongly agreed that “A couple does not need to have a baby after marriage.” This increased to 15 percent of those with urban origin and 11 percent of those with rural origin from the youngest cohort. The data also show that even though son preference has become less prevalent, a substantial proportion of the population still preferred to have a son if they could only have one child. From the oldest cohort to the youngest cohort (those born in 1976–1988), there was a decline from 32 percent to 26 percent for those who preferred a son if they could only have one child.

Transitioning into all four events

Figure 7 shows the percentage of youths who had completed all four events by age 25 and 30 by birth cohort and hukou origin. In general, those with rural hukou completed the transition to adulthood earlier than those of urban hukou origin in the same cohort. The rural/urban gap in the percentage completed increased across birth cohorts. The Cultural Revolution cohort with urban hukou origin stood out as having had the lowest percentage of completing the transition by age 25; though by 30, they did seem to have caught up. In the last three cohorts, we see a delaying trend of completing the transition among those with urban hukou origin by age 30, and a plateaued trend among those with rural hukou origin both by age 25 and by age 30. This is indicative of the return to normalcy in Chinese society and the subsequent impact of urbanization and globalization. By age 25, about 58 percent of rural and 34 percent urban youths had transitioned into all four events. For the last three cohorts, by age 30, about 85 percent of those with rural origin had entered adulthood (according to the definition used here), while a declining proportion of those with urban origin (from about 76 percent to 53 percent) had transitioned into all four events. The large drop over time (to 53 percent by age 30) for the urban group and the very large urban/rural gap (32 percent) among the youngest cohort reflect in large part the increased inequality in high school and college education attendance shown earlier in the article, which has implications for the timing of family formation. These data suggest new trajectories of transitioning to adulthood that are perhaps too new for us to detect with the data we have in hand. Future research is needed to examine more fully the behavior and attitudes of those who were born after the 1980s.

Figure 7

Percentage Who Have Completed All Four Events by Age 25 and by Age 30

Sequence of events

In Figure 8, we show some common sequences of transition events. Due to a lack of information on the month of transition into each event, the patterns presented here are not precise. Figure 8 shows that the most common pathway to adulthood remains the traditional route of finishing school first, entering the labor market, then marriage, and finally parenthood. However, this pattern declined for the last three cohorts, from 63 percent for the oldest cohort to 53 percent for the youngest cohort, indicating that an increasing proportion of the youths (up to half in the youngest cohorts) had taken much more diverse pathways. In the second most common sequence, young people got married and had a child in the same year. The rising trend of this pattern suggests a shortening of the first birth interval and a potentially rising incidence of premarital sex. We can also see this trend in the third most common sequence. There was a very large increase in the proportion of young people who had their first child before they were married (from 4 percent of the oldest cohort to 9 percent of the youngest cohort), indicating that premarital sex and cohabitation have become more common among Chinese young people. To further explore this issue, we investigate respondents’ attitudes toward cohabitation.

Figure 8

Frequencies of Sequences of Completing Transitioning Events for Cohorts

Data collected in the 2006 CGSS wave show that over time, the recent cohorts were much more likely to agree that “cohabitation is a personal matter, others should not denounce it” for all subgroups of the population. Among the youngest of the five cohorts, almost 40 percent of urban males “completely agreed” or “agreed” with this statement compared to 14 percent among the oldest cohort. Similar trends were observed in the other three groups. Even among the rural females who held the most conservative attitudes, more than a quarter (29 percent) of them completely agreed or agreed with the statement. Clearly, this signifies very important social changes in attitudes and behavior that warrant further investigation.

Factors shaping the transition tempos

To better understand what factors have driven the different patterns of transitioning to adulthood in China over the past five decades, we conduct a series of multivariate logistic regression analyses to estimate the probability of completing high school and attending college by the age of 22. We also use an estimate proportional hazard model for age at completion of education, starting first job, first marriage, and first birth while controlling for individual characteristics and family background. We include up to cohort 5 (those born in 1976–1985) for models 1 and 2, but only up to cohort 4 (those born in 1966–1975) for models 3 to 6.

Table 3 shows that compared to the youngest cohort, the first and second cohorts were 70 percent less likely to have completed high school, while the early and mid–economic reform cohorts were about 30 to 40 percent less likely to have done so. The gaps between cohorts are even larger for college education, particularly the disadvantaged Cultural Revolution cohort that was about 80 percent less likely to attend college. The earlier two cohorts completed schooling sooner and entered the labor force later. The Cultural Revolution cohort was married at a significantly later time. The older two cohorts also had a lower hazard (meaning starting later) of having the first birth by 32 to 42 percent, compared to the cohort born in 1966–1975. Holding other characteristics constant, males were more than twice as likely to have had completed high school or attend college. Males also had a lower hazard of completing education, getting married, and having first birth at a certain age by 38 percent, 38 percent, and 33 percent, respectively.

Table 3

Odds Ratios for Logistic Regression Predicting Whether Completed High School and Attended College and Cox Hazard Ratios for Age at Completion of Education, First Job, First Marriage, and First Birth

	Model 1	Model 2	Model 3	Model 4	Model 5	Model 6
Variables	High School Completion	College Attendance	Age Complete Education	Age Start Working	Age at First Marriage	Age at First Birth
Child characteristics
Birth cohort (Ref = 1976–1986)
1936–1945 (Early Communist years)	0.310***	0.358***	1.217***	0.765***	0.938	0.580***
	−0.0317	−0.0475	−0.0552	−0.0305	−0.0383	−0.0256
1946–1955 (Cultural Revolution years)	0.293***	0.196***	1.254***	0.895***	0.853***	0.675***
	−0.0232	−0.0225	−0.0391	−0.0263	−0.021	−0.018
1956–1965 (Early economic reform years)	0.695***	0.305***	1.047*	1	0.995	0.908***
	−0.0455	−0.0279	−0.0244	−0.0232	−0.0202	−0.0202
1966–1975 (Mid–economic reform years)	0.589***	0.554***	(Ref)	(Ref)	(Ref)	(Ref)
	−0.0362	−0.0413
Male	2.127***	2.258***	0.622***	0.952	0.624***	0.671***
	−0.123	−0.217	−0.0173	−0.0247	−0.0145	−0.0163
Education (Ref = primary)
Middle school				0.527***	0.805***	0.899***
				−0.013	−0.0168	−0.02
Junior college and above				0.359***	0.641***	0.691***
				−0.0109	−0.0187	−0.0212
Family background
Hukou origin (Urban = 1)	5.624***	4.542***	0.554***	0.740***	0.692***	0.734***
	−0.336	−0.428	−0.0156	−0.0217	−0.0177	−0.0191
Male x hukou origin	0.584***	0.534***	1.347***	1.075	1.084*	1.028
	−0.0498	−0.0662	−0.0531	−0.0405	−0.036	−0.0353
Region (Ref = Eastern)
Central	0.816***	0.650***	1.122***	1.101***	1.101***	1.029
	−0.0405	−0.0461	−0.0272	−0.0259	−0.022	−0.0219
Western	0.804***	0.786**	1.177***	1.178***	1.137***	1.008
	−0.0464	−0.0642	−0.034	−0.031	−0.0265	−0.0248
Ethnicity (Han = 1)	1.900***	1.485*	0.823***	0.872***	0.949	1.038
	−0.178	−0.193	−0.0445	−0.0344	−0.0394	−0.0484
Father’s education (Ref = primary)
Junior middle school	2.214***	2.03***	0.756***	0.957	0.922**	0.926**
	−0.124	−0.158	−0.0202	−0.0227	−0.0229	−0.0242
High school and above	3.919***	4.564***	0.627***	0.964	0.896***	0.921*
	−0.272	−0.369	−0.0201	−0.0275	−0.0287	−0.03
Father’s party membership	1.579***	1.590***	0.843***	1.038	1.024	1.011
	−0.0991	−0.122	−0.0256	−0.0296	−0.0251	−0.0283
Log likelihood	−9,754.8	−4,772.7	−102,922.9	−130,199.2	−142,835.2	−131,717.8
Pseudo-R²	.198	.206	.00856	.009	.00655	.00604
N	20,577	20,577	12,206	15,064	16,312	15,179

NOTE: Standard errors in parentheses. Models 1 and 2 restrict analysis to respondents aged 22 and above. Models 3–6 restrict analysis to respondents aged 30 and above. Model 3 includes samples from the 2005 and 2006 CGSS but not the 2008 CGSS because timing of completing education is not available for 2008 data. Models 4–6 include samples from the 2005, 2006, and 2008 CGSS. For more information on the CGSS, see http://www.cssod.org/index.php [in Chinese].

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

The hukou status has had far-reaching consequences for young adults’ pathways to adulthood. Controlling for cohort and other socioeconomic covariates, those with an urban hukou were more than 5 times more likely than those of rural hukou origin to have had completed high school, more than 4 times more likely to have had attended college, and thus less likely to have had completed education or started work and family formation earlier than their counterparts in rural areas. There is a significant interaction effect between gender and hukou status for education and the timing of first marriage, though not for entry into the work force or parenthood.

Education is a key factor for youths’ trajectories into adulthood. Compared to those with primary school education or lower, those who had middle and high school education started working later by 50 percent, started marriage later by 20 percent, and had first birth later by about 10 percent hazard rate. The corresponding rates, if one had a college education and above, were 64 percent, 36 percent, and 30 percent, respectively, for starting working, getting married, and having the first child. This reflects the emphasis on human capital in the labor market and its impact on family formation behaviors.

Family background also affects young adult trajectories. Across all cohorts, father’s education and political capital both significantly increased the likelihood of youths obtaining more education. Father’s education was associated with a later completion of education and onset of family formation.

Discussion

The historical, cultural, and policy contexts of China render unique experiences for Chinese young adults over the past half century. These trends reflect the consequences of a complex interplay among dramatic policy interventions and their effects on family formation behavior and gender roles, education and economic reforms, stark and growing urban/rural disparities, and the Confucius ideologies that remain prevalent but changing in China. In contrast to the protracted trend in many Western societies, the more recent Chinese cohorts transitioned to marriage and parenthood sooner than those who had grown up experiencing turbulent historical events such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The economic and education reforms since the late 1970s have increased urban and rural disparity in youths’ life course trajectories at an astonishing rate despite their overall positive impact on individuals’ educational attainment and economic well-being. While the value of universal marriage and childbearing within marriage prevails and son preference remains strong in modern China, we see evidence suggesting an increase in age at first marriage and childbearing, in cohabitation, and in premarital sex among the most recent cohort, especially in the urban areas. As found in the West, gender differences have narrowed greatly in China. Convergence of the protracted trend of transitioning to adulthood in the West may occur in the next few decades although the only-child generation may transition to adulthood with unique Chinese characteristics.

Available data do not allow us to adequately capture some of the unique barriers that young adults born after the 1980s face as they transition to adulthood. Young adults today, and in the coming decades, face considerable new challenges as a result of the one-child policy, new technologies, and more liberal ideologies. The skewed gender ratios in China, especially high in rural China, as a result of the one-child policy will seriously affect the marriage market in China. In the next decade, it is estimated that there will be about 60 million missing women. It has been estimated that in 2020, about 20 percent of China’s rural men between the ages of 35 to 44 will never have taken a bride, and the proportion will rise to above 30 percent by 2040 (Eberstadt 2009).

We also see how the one-child policy and the lengthened life expectancy have resulted in a population that is ageing at a faster pace in China than in many countries. As a result, the dependency ratio will rise, creating an increasing burden for young adults to care for their elderly parents. This is often described as “the 4-2-1 problem,” where a single child will have to support two parents and four grandparents. This will have strong implications for intergenerational relationships and transfers.

Another challenge is the dramatic increase in unemployment rates among college graduates as a result of the 1999 college expansion policy and a mismatch of student skills and the demands of the industries (Bai 2006). According to the Education Ministry, more than one-quarter of the 6.3 million Chinese college graduates in 2010 were still unemployed six months after graduation. As the Chinese labor market gradually becomes more skill-based and demands more human capital, youths who do not have high education will face a harder time transitioning to adulthood.

The hukou system poses insurmountable barriers to the increasing number of young men and women who migrate from rural areas to cities. Obtaining high school and college education has become a pie in the sky due to the hukou-bound entrance examination system and the prohibitively high tuition fees. Many migrant youths are not able to attend high schools in the cities and will not return to rural areas for education. As a result, most of them forgo high school education and enter the labor market prematurely. This does not bode well for their life chances compared to those of urban youth. In addition to demographic and institutional challenges, Chinese youths have increasingly been exposed to Western values and ideologies such as individual freedom. The CGSS data presented here show a trend of increasing acceptance of cohabitation despite a high marriage rate. It remains to be seen to what extent social norms—such as the near-universal marriage and childbearing within marital union and a greater sense of responsibility and obligations toward family than young people in the Western societies—change as globalization advances. These are important issues to address in future research to help understand the full ramifications of the rapid transformation to a market economy in China for Chinese youths’ pathways to adulthood.

Footnotes

NOTE: We are thankful for the support from the National University of Singapore, Lippo Pte Limited, and Singapura Investment Holdings Pte Ltd.

Notes

Wei-Jun Jean Yeung is a professor in the Department of Sociology and the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. She is also the research leader of the Changing Family in Asia cluster at the Asian Research Institute and chair of the steering committee for the Family, Children and Youth research cluster in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore.

Shu Hu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include stratification and inequality, family, education, and social change.

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