Educational Expectation-Attainment Gaps and Mental Health over the Early Adult Life Course

Abstract

We advance research on the association of educational expectation–attainment gaps with mental health by asking two questions that derive from the stress process and life course frameworks: (1) How does the association change over the early adult life course? and (2) To what extent is the association attributable to adult social roles and socioeconomic attainment? Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we find that close to the time when the expectation would have been realized, educational attainment is associated with mental health but expectations and the interaction between expectations and attainments are not, independent of selection factors. As respondents age, expectations themselves become more consistently associated with mental health. Adult social roles and socioeconomic status contribute little to explaining these associations. We discuss the implications for the stress process framework and life course research.

Keywords

educational expectations life course mental health stress process transition to adulthood

There is a long tradition of research in social psychology on the role of expectations, aspirations, and future orientations in shaping decision-making, action, and well-being (e.g., Hitlin and Johnson 2015; Johnson and Hitlin 2017; Schafer, Ferraro, and Mustillo 2011; Sendroiu, Upenieks, and Schafer 2021). One specific line of research in this tradition considers the association of gaps between expectations and achievements with mental health (Culatta and Clay-Warner 2021; Mossakowski 2011; Reynolds and Baird 2010; Sendroiu et al. 2021; Smith-Greenaway and Yeatman 2020). Studies of this topic focus primarily on educational expectations, testing the hypothesis that gaps between expectations and attainments are associated with mental health independent of expectations and attainments themselves. Results generally support the conclusion that people who fail to achieve expected levels of education report poorer mental health than those who meet or surpass their expectations (e.g., Culatta and Clay-Warner 2021; Mossakowski 2011; for an exception, see Reynolds and Baird 2010).

Recent elaborations of this research consider more refined questions about the conditions under which expectation-attainment gaps are associated with mental health and the reasons why. These studies find, for example, that gaps between attainments and perceived peer expectations matter more than gaps between attainments and one’s own expectations (Culatta and Clay-Warner 2021), that the association changes with the passage of time (Smith-Greenaway and Yeatman 2020), and that failing to achieve expectations matters more than failing to achieve aspirations (Sendroiu et al. 2021).¹

We extend this line of research by asking two questions grounded in stress process and life course considerations (Elder and Giele 2009; Pearlin 2010). First, how does the association of educational expectation–attainment gaps with mental health change over the early adult life course as people age? Second, to what extent is the association attributable to adult social roles and socioeconomic attainment? These questions further integrate this line of research with the life course framework and, by so doing, build connections to more general questions about future expectations as determinants of life course pathways (Hitlin and Johnson 2015).

To answer the first question, we evaluate the association of educational expectation–attainment gaps with psychological well-being at two points in the life course: close to the time when the expectation would have been realized and several years later. As we describe later, we expect that how people interpret and evaluate unmet expectations—and by extension, the perceived stressfulness of the expectation-attainment match—change with age, in ways that matter for mental health. To answer the second question, we evaluate whether controlling an array of indicators of adult social roles and adult socioeconomic status (SES) reduces the association.

Background

Several different theoretical traditions have been invoked to motivate research on educational expectation–achievement gaps, including self-discrepancy theory (Higgins 1987), relative deprivation theory (Walker and Pettigrew 1984), and stress process theory (Wheaton 1994). We situate our analysis within the stress process framework, which engages fruitfully with the life course perspective (Pearlin 2010). Within the stress process framework, failing to achieve expected levels of education is conceptualized as a nonevent stressor: an event that is desired or anticipated and that does not occur (Gersten et al. 1974; Neugarten, Moore, and Lowe 1965). Nonevents may produce distress both because of their associations with objective life circumstances and because of their implications for future life possibilities. In the case of failing to meet educational expectations, people face the objective challenges associated with lower educational attainment (e.g., lower income) but also the anticipation that their life chances in multiple domains will be constrained (Reynolds et al. 2006). Nonevents may have particularly profound mental health consequences when anticipated states are normative (Frost and LeBlanc 2014). In the United States, most adolescents expect to earn a college degree, suggesting that college completion is a normative expectation (Reynolds and Pemberton 2001) and that failing to achieve this expectation will be distressing.

We introduce two life course considerations that add nuance to our consideration of these possibilities: variation over the early adult life course and the relevance of adult social roles and socioeconomic attainment. While studies of specific subpopulations suggest that the effects of unrealized expectations may change over time (Sendroiu et al. 2021; Smith-Greenaway and Yeatman 2020), previous research has not examined changes over the life course with a representative sample of U.S. adults. In addition, while past research highlights the relevance of role-based identities (Hitlin and Johnson 2015; Sendroiu et al. 2021; Smith-Greenaway and Yeatman 2020) and “internalized” social clocks for reaching adulthood (Culatta and Clay-Warner 2021), whether and how early adult roles and related attainments are implicated in the mental health consequences of expectations, attainments, or the gap remains unclear.

Variation over the Life Course

We begin by evaluating the association of expectations, attainments, and expectation-attainment gaps with mental health at two points in the life course: close to the time the expectation would have been met and several years later. The stress process framework supports competing hypotheses, both of which derive from the central observation that the meanings of stressors shape their associations with mental health (McLeod 2012; Pearlin 1989): that distress associated with the gap between expectations and attainments will decline over time and that it will increase.

The meanings of life circumstances are not static, allowing for the possibility that stressors can motivate positive change (McLeod and Almazan 2003; Turner and Avison 1992); people construct the meanings of successes and failures over the life course, reframing their experiences and adjusting their expectations as they confront the realities of their lives (Park and Folkman 1997; Pearlin 1999; Thoits 1994). Applied to the current case, young adults who fail to achieve expected levels of education may reframe the failure over time as less threatening to the self and, thereby, less distressing. For example, they may focus on the positive aspects of their lives or pursue success in other life domains (Reynolds and Baird 2010; Thoits 1994). Social comparisons may further support a positive reframing as young adults come to realize that many contemporaries in their social circle likewise have not achieved their anticipated levels of expectations (Festinger 1954).

Alternatively, the distress associated with unmet expectations may increase over time as the full implications of the failure become clearer. Using data from Malawi, Smith-Greenaway and Yeatman (2020) conclude that, in the short term, women who did not achieve their desired level of education were less depressed if they got married than if they did not. However, in the long term, not achieving desired levels of education was associated with higher levels of depression regardless of marital status. Presumably, with the passage of time, women became more fully cognizant of the missed opportunities associated with failing to achieve their desired levels of education. Consistent with this interpretation, cumulative disadvantage theory suggests that the mental health disadvantages associated with failing to achieve one’s expected level of education will increase over time as the gap in life circumstances based on educational attainment grows larger (Ferraro, Schafer, and Wilkinson 2016).

To evaluate variation over the life course, we estimate the association of the educational expectation–attainment gap with mental health among the same group of respondents during early adulthood (ages 23–28), close to the end of their educational careers, and 7 to 8 years later, as they move through the early adulthood years.

Adult Social Roles and SES

The second part of our analysis evaluates whether any observed associations of expectations, attainments, or expectation-attainment gaps with mental health are attributable to adult social roles and socioeconomic attainment. Educational trajectories are intertwined with other normative transitions during the early adult years, including parenthood, marriage, and residential independence (Hogan and Astone 1986; Shanahan 2000), both as causes and as consequences. For example, the pursuit of higher education may delay entry into other adult roles, such as becoming a parent or marrying (Smith, Crosnoe, and Chao 2016). At the same time, early childbearing or marriage may move young adults off educational pathways, thereby reducing attainment and increasing the expectations-attainment gap. Young adults who are not able to pursue postsecondary education for other reasons (e.g., lack of funding, poor academic performance) may also choose alternative life paths by adopting adult roles, such as marriage and childbearing, that they would otherwise have postponed. Inasmuch as role statuses are themselves associated with mental health (e.g., Taylor and Turner 2001; Thoits 2011), the association of expectation-attainment gaps with mental health may be partially attributable to adult social roles.

Educational expectations, attainments, and the gap between the two may also be associated with other indicators of early adult socioeconomic attainment. Youth who do not pursue higher education or who leave school before completing their degree are more likely to experience financial hardship and less likely to achieve prestigious occupations (Grusky and DiPrete 1990; Murnane, Willett, and Levy 1995). At the same time, as Hitlin and Johnson (2015) observe, high life expectations predict higher earnings independent of educational attainment. Following from these observations, we consider the extent to which the association of expectations and attainments with mental health is accounted for by adult SES.

Selection Processes

Analyses of associations of expectations, attainments, and the gap between the two with mental health must also take into account their early life determinants. Youth from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely than their more advantaged counterparts to expect and achieve high levels of education (Coleman et al. 1966; Kao and Tienda 1998); the gap between expectations and attainments is also higher in those groups, and mental health is poorer (Williams 2018). Early health conditions—both mental and physical health—also reduce both expectations and attainments. Young children with emotional and behavioral problems achieve lower levels of education than other children (McLeod and Kaiser 2004) in part because they have lower educational expectations (McLeod and Fettes 2007). Similarly, adolescents with disabilities are less likely to graduate from high school than are their counterparts without disabilities (Shandra and Hogan 2009) and experience relatively poor mental health (Kolaitis 2008). We account for selection processes by incorporating controls for these conditions in our models.

Research Questions

Following from these arguments, we pose the following research questions:

What are the associations of educational expectations, attainments, and the expectation-attainment gap with mental health in early adulthood? To answer this question, we estimate the main effects of expectations and attainments on mental health and then consider the interaction between the two. Based on prior research, we expect to observe a significant interaction such that, among respondents with high educational expectations, those who attained a high level of education will report better mental health than those who did not.

Does the association of the expectation- attainment gap with mental health vary over the life course? Theory and research support competing answers: that the associationis weaker at older ages, as people adjust to their life circumstances and/or pursue other opportunities, and that the association is stronger at older ages, as people come to terms with the limitations imposed by lower educational attainment.

Are the observed associations of expectations, attainments, and the expectation-attainment gap with mental health independent of adult role statuses and adult SES? We examine four markers of adulthood—marriage, parenthood, full-time employment, and residential independence—and several indicators of financial and occupational status.² We anticipate that young adults who expected to achieve a college education but did not will be more likely than other young adults to be married, parents, working full-time, and living independently (Johnson and Mollborn 2009) and that these role statuses will partially, but not fully, explain the associations of expectations, attainment, and the gap with mental health (e.g., Mossakowski 2011; Reynolds and Baird 2010). Similarly, we expect that some, but not all, of the associations of expectations and attainments with mental health will be attributable to adult socioeconomic attainment (Hitlin and Johnson 2015).

Data and Methods

Data

We use data from waves 1, 3, and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which incorporates a nationally representative sample of adolescents (Harris 2013). In 1994, in-school questionnaires were administered to students in grades 7 to 12 selected from a stratified random sample of all U.S. high schools (n = 90,118); from this sample, a nationally representative subsample was interviewed at wave 1 between 1994 and 1995 (n = 20,745). Waves 2, 3, and 4 followed in 1996, 2001 to 2002, and 2008, respectively.

We limited our analytic sample to respondents who were ages 23 to 28 in wave 3; who participated in waves 1, 3, and 4 (when they were 30–35 years old); and who had valid sample weights. We chose this age range for the analysis to ensure that most college-bound respondents in our sample would have at least begun college by wave 3 and would have graduated by wave 4.³ A total of 5,159 respondents were eligible for the analysis based on these criteria. After accounting for missing data (see later section), the analytic sample size was 4,904. Educational expectations were assessed at wave 1. Educational attainments, mental health outcomes, and adult roles were measured at both waves 3 and 4.

Measures

We present basic information about our measures here. Details are available in the online appendix (Table S1).

Dependent variables

We included two measures of mental health in our analysis: depressive symptoms, measured at both waves 3 and 4, and perceived stress, measured only at wave 4. The measures of depression are based on a subset of items from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression index (Radloff 1977), one of the most widely used measures for psychological distress in general population samples. Nine identical items are available at all waves, with response categories range from 0 = never/rarely to 3 = most of the time or all of the time. For our analysis, we constructed a depressive symptom score by taking the average across the items the respondents answered in each wave, with higher scores indicating higher levels of depressive symptoms (α = .80 for wave 3; .81 for wave 4).

Our measure of perceived stress is based on Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale (PSS; Cohen, Kamarck, and Mermelstein 1983), a validated measure that is strongly linked to stress biomarkers (Burns et al. 2002). The Add Health includes an abbreviated, four-item version of the PSS, with response categories ranging from 1 = never to 5 = very often. As for depressive symptoms, we constructed an average index (α = .72).⁴

Expectations, attainments, and the gap

Our key independent variables are educational expectations, attainments, and the gap between the two. We constructed dummy variables for expectations and attainments and then created the interaction term between expectation and attainment to capture the expectation-attainment gap. At wave 1, respondents answered this question about educational expectations: “On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is low and 5 is high, how likely is it that you will go to college?” We constructed a dichotomous variable with responses of 4 or 5 indicating that respondents expected to attend college. According to this coding, about 74 percent of respondents expected to attend college, similar to the percentage reported for a comparable national cohort (Reynolds and Pemberton 2001). We reran all models using a cutoff of 5. Although some specific results differed, the overall conclusions were substantively the same. Details of those analyses are provided in endnotes (6 and 8).

Educational attainment was measured based on responses to these two questions: “What is the highest grade or year of regular school you completed?” (wave 3) and “What is the highest level of education that you have achieved to date?” (wave 4). At wave 3, young adults who responded at least “1 year of college” or above were coded 1 on a variable indicating that they attended some college. At wave 4, those who responded at least “completed college (bachelor’s degree)” were coded as having received a college degree. Although the wave 1 measure of educational expectations does not refer to receiving a college degree, it seems reasonable to assume that most youth who expect to attend college also expect to complete college successfully.

To operationalize the expectations-attainment gap, we created multiplicative interactions between educational expectations and attainment. Some respondents who reported expecting to go to college may have expected to receive an associate’s degree or vocational certification rather than a bachelor’s degree. If so, our operationalization of the gap at wave 4 misrepresents their status, that is, they would be coded as failing to achieve expectations despite having done so. This makes our evaluation of the mental health consequences of failed expectations more conservative, that is, it dampens the effect of failing to achieve expected levels of education.

Adult social roles

Our measures of adult roles include independent living (1 if not living with parents/relatives), working full-time (1 if working full-time, including serving in the military), marital status (1 if ever married), and parental status (1 if has children) measured at either wave 3 or wave 4, depending on which wave the outcome variables come from. To account for changes in marital status over time, we also include an indicator for marital dissolution (1 if ever divorced).

Early adult SES

In wave 3, we constructed a dichotomous measure of financial hardship based on four indicators. In wave 4, we used personal income as an indicator of financial status. Last, for both waves, we used items that asked respondents about their type of job, with response categories based on the 1998 Standard Occupational Classification Code. Respondents were coded 1 if they worked in management, professional, and related occupations.

Selection

To account for the role of family background in shaping expectations, attainments, and the gap, in subsequent models we controlled for family background characteristics, including parents’ education level, family public assistance receipt, and family structure. We then added a set of measures of prior health conditions in order to control for the possibility that early adolescent health influenced later educational attainment: depressive symptoms, physical symptoms, and physical disability, all assessed at wave 1 (McLeod, Uemura, and Rohrman 2012; Shandra and Hogan 2009).

Controls

All models included basic demographic controls for gender, race/ethnicity (Hispanic/Latino, non-Latino white, non-Latino Black/African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, and other race), nativity (1 if born in the United States, 0 if not) in all models. Each of these characteristics is associated with educational attainment and mental health especially for adolescents (Lee and Lee 2020). These variables are based on students’ reports in wave 1.

Missing Data

Missingness was mostly limited to two variables: family public assistance and parental education. To minimize missing data, we used information from other waves to impute values. For instance, at wave 1, respondents were asked whether their residential father/mother received public assistance, such as welfare. At wave 3, they were asked whether anyone in their household ever received public assistance or welfare payments before they turned 18. If respondents lacked data on the wave 1 indicator of receiving public assistance, we used their wave 3 report to assign them a value on that variable. In total, we replaced wave 1 values for public assistance with wave 3 values for 383 cases, leaving only 12 observations with missing values. Similarly, we used the wave 3 report of parental education to substitute for 393 missing observations from wave 1. Such a strategy leaves us 4,904 of our analytic sample—95 percent of the observations across all study variables. After these substitutions, we used listwise deletion in all models.⁵

Analytic Strategy

Because the outcomes are continuously scaled and for simplicity of presentation, we fit and report ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models, beginning with models that evaluate the baseline associations of expectations, attainments, and the gap with mental health and following with models that incorporate selection factors, adult social roles, and adult SES. Sensitivity analyses (not shown) using negative binominal models yield the same results. To account for the complex survey design, we use appropriate cross-sectional survey weights in each model: the wave 3 weight in models with wave 3 outcomes, the wave 4 weight with wave 4 outcomes.

Results

Descriptive Findings

The online appendix (Table S2) presents descriptive statistics for the main analysis variables. In brief, the distributions of major analysis variables conform to other national surveys of young adults. For example, at wave 1, 74.47 percent of respondents indicated they expected to go to college, whereas 25.53 percent of respondents reported that they did not expect to go to college. This closely reflects the distribution of educational expectations reported in another nationally representative sample in a similar cohort (Reynolds and Pemberton 2001). As for attainment, 56.75 percent of respondents had attended college by wave 3—our measure of attainment at that age—and 32.73 percent of respondents had graduated from college by wave 4. These numbers also mirror the percentage of college degree holders for adults in this cohort (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2008, 2011).

Educational Expectation/Achievement and Mental Health

Our first two research questions ask whether the gap between educational expectations and attainment is associated with mental health independent of expectations and attainments themselves and whether this association varies over the early adult life course. To answer these questions, we estimated the association at two different time points: wave 3 (ages 23–28) and 4 (ages 30–35). At each wave, we considered whether the associations were attributable to family background and health conditions early in life.

Table 1 reports coefficients from OLS regression models that evaluate the association of educational expectations and attainments with depressive symptoms at wave 3. In these models, the sample was restricted to those with valid information on all study variables, including the items from wave 4. Analyses using a sample defined by having valid values on wave 3 variables alone produced the same substantive conclusions. We report coefficients for the main independent variables here; details are provided in the online appendix (Tables S3–S5).

Table 1.

Coefficients from Ordinary Least Squares Regressions of Depressive Symptoms on Educational Expectations and College Enrollment, Wave 3

CES-D, wave 3	1	2	3	4
Enrollment in college	–.11*** (.02)	–.08 (.05)	–.10*** (.02)	–.08*** (.02)
Expected college	–.09*** (.02)	–.08* (.02)	–.08** (.02)	–.03 (.02)
Enrolled × Expected		–.03(.06)
Wave 1 family background			✓	✓
Wave 1 prior health				✓
Adjusted R ²	.0530	.0530	.0555	.1547
Constant	.53	.53	.53	.24
N	4,904	4,904	4,904	4,904

Note: Survey weights were used to account for the complex survey design. All models include controls for gender, race/ethnicity, and nativity status. Models 3 and 4 add controls for family background and prior health, respectively. CES-D = Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression Scale.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001 (two tailed).

Table 1 shows that at younger adult ages, college enrollment and educational expectations are negatively associated with depression (column 1; p < .001), but the interaction between expectations and attainment is not significant even in models with only demographic characteristics included (column 2). In other words, the associations of expectations and attainments with depression are additive; high expectations and high attainment both contribute to lower levels of depression among young adults.⁶

To evaluate whether the observed associations of college enrollment and expectations with depression are a function of selection processes, we estimated a series of models that included the main effects for these variables, with controls for family background and prior health added sequentially. The coefficients for both expectations and attainment remain significant after controlling for family background (column 3); the coefficient for expectations becomes nonsignificant after controlling for prior health (column 4). This indicates that at early adult ages, the association of expectations with mental health derives from the association of both with prior physical and mental health; youth with prior health problems were less likely to expect to attend college and also have higher levels of depression as young adults.

In sum, consistent with Reynolds and Baird (2010), failing to enroll in college itself is associated with higher levels of depression at younger adult ages, regardless of educational expectations. Expectations themselves are also associated with depression, but that association is accounted for by prior health.⁷

Table 2 reports coefficients from OLS regression models that evaluate the association of educational expectations and attainments with depressive symptoms and perceived stress at wave 4, when respondents were 30 to 35 years of age. The pattern of results is both similar to and different from those at wave 3. As at wave 3, at wave 4, educational attainment and educational expectations are negatively associated with depressive symptoms in the initial models (columns 1, 3, and 4). However, different from the wave 3 results, these associations remain significant in the presence of sociodemographic controls and controls for family background and prior health. As is true in wave 3, the interaction between attainment and expectations is not significant at wave 4 (column 2), indicating that the gap between the two is not associated with depression.

Table 2.

Coefficients from Ordinary Least Squares Regressions of Depressive Symptoms on Educational Expectations and College Completion, Wave 4

CES-D, wave 4	1	2	3	4
College completion	–.12*** (.02)	–.00(.07)	–.10*** (.02)	–.08*** (.02)
Expected college	–.15*** (.03)	–.14*** (.03)	–.14*** (.02)	–.09** (.03)
Completed × Expected		–.12(.07)
Wave 1 family background			✓	✓
Wave 1 prior health				✓
Adjusted R ²	.0615	.0617	.0651	.1424
Constant	.63	.63	.71	.44
N	4,904	4,904	4,904	4,904

**p < .01. ***p < .001 (two tailed).

Table 3 shows the results for perceived stress. In contrast to the results for depression, the interaction between expectations and attainments is significantly associated with perceived stress, although only before controlling for prior health (columns 2 and 3). The interaction indicates that among respondents who expected to attend college, those who achieved that expectation report lower stress than those who did not; however, among respondents who did not expect to attend college, levels of perceived stress do not differ depending on eventual attainment. The interaction between expectations and attainment becomes nonsignificant after controlling for prior health (column 4): once we take into account prior health, high expectations are associated with lower perceived stress regardless of whether respondents completed college.⁸

Table 3.

Coefficients from Ordinary Least Squares Regressions of Perceived Stress on Educational Expectations and College Completion, Wave 4

PSS, wave 4	1	2	3	4
College completion	–.25*** (.02)	–.04(.09)	–.04(.09)	–.07(.09)
Expected college	–.24*** (.04)	–.23*** (.04)	–.22*** (.05)	–.17** (.05)
Completed × Expected		–.22* (.09)	–.21* (.09)	–.16(.10)
Wave 1 family background			✓	✓
Wave 1 prior health				✓
Adjusted R ²	.0673	.0673	.0718	.1179
Constant	2.35	2.35	2.31	1.98
N	4,904	4,904	4,904	4,904

p < .05. **p < .01. *** p < .001 (two tailed).

Expectations, Attainment, and Adult Social Roles

Our third research question concerns whether adult social roles and adult SES explain the observed associations of expectations, attainments, and the gap with mental health. To evaluate this possibility, we begin by examining the association of adult social roles and SES with expectations and attainments.

Table 4 presents the distribution of adult social roles and adult SES by expectation-attainment combinations, with the rightmost column indicating which group differences are statistically significant at the .05 level. For example, the difference in the rate of independent living between those who attended at least some college with and without having expected to (65.91 vs. 55.47) is statistically significant (p < .05); rates of independent living are not significantly different across the other categories. Young adults who expected to but did not attend college are more likely to be working full-time than those who did not expect to and did not attend college. Rates of marriage and parenthood also differ across the groups. Those who had not attended college are more likely to be married and parents by wave 3 than their counterparts with some college, a pattern that holds through wave 4. At wave 3, those who expected to enroll and attended college are less likely to experience marital dissolution, compared with every other group. Such a pattern extends to wave 4, except that the difference between college graduates by expectations becomes nonsignificant.

Table 4.

Adult Social Roles and Socioeconomic Status by Expectations and Attainments

Variable	(1) Expected to enroll in college and did	(2) Did not expect to enroll in college and did	(3) Expected to enroll in college and did not	(4) Did not expect to enroll in college and did not	Significant differences
Wave 3
Independent living	65.91%	55.47%	65.49%	64.63%	1 vs. 2
Working full-time	61.96%	65.66%	64.96%	59.02%	3 vs. 4
Having been married	23.63%	23.77%	33.89%	35.78%	1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3
Having children	15.49%	23.77%	35.22%	39.45%	1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 42 vs. 4
Marital dissolution	1.91%	3.38%	4.06%	4.27%	1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3, 1 vs., 4
Professional occupation	37.36%	20.22%	15.17%	8.71%	1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 42 vs. 3, 2 vs. 4, 3 vs. 4
Financial hardship	12.68%	18.35%	20.37%	23.81%	1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3; 1 vs. 4
n	2,516	267	1,134	987	4,904
Wave 4
Independent living	87.38%	81.16%	74.83%	72.22%	1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 4
Working full-time	79.01%	73.91%	71.70%	66.78%	1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 4
Having been married	58.01%	42.03%	60.45%	57.60%	None
Having children	38.52%	31.88%	63.11%	65.08%	1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 32 vs. 4
Marital dissolution	17.06%	14.49%	31.08%	33.81%	1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 4, 3 vs. 4
Professional occupation	72.91%	50.72%	28.14%	15.27%	1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 42 vs. 3, 2 vs. 4, 3 vs. 4
Income $30,000 or more	72.85%	59.42%	48.44%	39.32%	1 vs. 2, 1 vs. 3, 1 vs. 43 vs. 4
n	1,532	69	2,118	1,185	4,904

Note: The table presents the percentages of respondents in each column who occupy the social role. Comparisons in the rightmost column indicate differences statistically significant at the p < .05 level.

More consistent differences are observed for adult SES. For purposes of Table 4, we dichotomized personal income at $30,000. In both waves, those who expected to attend college and achieved their expectations are more likely to be in professional occupations, followed by those who did not expect to attend but made it to and through college. These same groups of respondents are also better off financially, with the lowest rates of financial hardship at wave 3 and the highest rates of having personal income of $30,000 or above at wave 4.

The Relevance of Adult Social Roles and SES

As the final step in our analysis, we estimated models to evaluate whether adult social roles and adult SES explain the observed associations of educational expectations and attainments with mental health. Because the results are easy to describe, we report the models in Table S6 of the online appendix.

As noted earlier, at wave 3, respondents who attended college report lower depression levels than those who did not, while there is no difference based on educational expectations. The coefficient for college enrollment is not reduced substantially by the addition of adult social roles and adult SES to the model. In wave 4, we observed that for both depression and perceived stress, respondents who graduated from college and those who expected to graduate from college report better mental health than those who did not. In the models predicting depression, adding adult social roles and adult SES to the models makes very little difference to the coefficients for college completion and expectations. In contrast, although the coefficients remain significant, adding adult SES variables does reduce the coefficients for attainments and expectations in the model for perceived stress. Specifically, the coefficient for college completion is reduced from −0.22 to −0.17 with controls for adult social roles and from −0.17 to −.11 with controls for adult SES. The coefficient for expectations is also reduced by controlling both social roles and SES, although to a somewhat lesser degree than for college completion (−0.18 to −0.15 and then to −0.13). Overall, then, adult social roles and adult SES contribute little to explaining the associations of expectations and/or attainment with depression at both waves and only partially explain the associations for perceived stress in wave 4.

Discussion

Drawing from the stress process framework and the life course perspective, we investigated whether educational expectations, attainments, and the gap between the two are associated with mental health at two points in the early adult life course and whether adult role statuses are implicated in these associations. In so doing, we introduced life course considerations regarding the transition to adulthood into research on the mental health consequences of expectations.

We began by asking whether the association of expectations with mental health varies depending on attainments. Our results indicate that it does not, at least for depression. The interaction between educational expectations and attainments is not significantly associated with depression at either wave. Notably, however, it is significantly associated with perceived stress at wave 4, although only before controlling for selection factors. Inasmuch as the interaction term empirically represents a nonevent stressor, these results indicate that nonevent stressors do not consistently produce distress even when, as for college enrollment, the expected events are normative. The question our analysis raises, then, is why?

One possible reason why young adults who fail to achieve expected levels of education do not report higher levels of depression is that they find ways to cope effectively with their failure or seek satisfaction in other life domains. Reynolds and Baird (2010:167) propose that these young adults display adaptive resiliency, the “ability to problem solve, find offsetting benefits from challenging circumstances, and otherwise focus on the positive aspects of detours in the transition to adulthood.” Indeed, individuals may act as “psychological activists,” constructing positive narratives of the self over the life course even in the face of disappointment (Thoits 1994). This explanation resonates with the general insight that the effects of stressors on mental health depend on the meanings they hold for the individual (McLeod 2012; Pearlin 1989) and suggests that nonevent stressors will be more strongly associated with mental health when people do not have access to compensatory interpretations. An important next step in this research will be to identify variation in the process by which those interpretations are developed (McLeod 2012).

Relatedly, young adults who fail to achieve expected levels of education may also choose to focus on other life domains, such as marriage and parenthood, as sources of satisfaction and positive mental health (Hogan and Astone 1986; Shanahan 2000; Smith, Crosnoe, and Chao 2016). These alternative pursuits may blunt the potential disappointment and future concern associated with not attending college. As we will discuss in more detail, although we observed differences in adult social role occupancy across groups defined by expectations and attainments, our analysis did not consider role entries and exits in relation to educational trajectories, leaving open questions about how and under what conditions unrealized expectations motivate choices that are intended to improve life outcomes. A logical next step in this line of research would be more nuanced analyses of subsequent role trajectories among respondents who do, and do not, achieve expected levels of education (e.g., Uno et al. 2010).

We did observe a significant interaction between expectations and attainments in the initial models for perceived stress. The interaction indicated that among young adults who expected to attend college, levels of perceived stress were lower if they graduated than if they did not. That interaction became nonsignificant when we controlled for prior health. In supplemental analyses, we established that among the indicators of prior health, both prior depression and early physical health contributed to the reduction in the interaction coefficient. This indicates that among young adults who expect to attend college, those who do attend college are distinguished by having experienced better physical and mental health at younger ages. While this may not be surprising given other evidence that physical and mental health problems disrupt educational trajectories (Haas and Fosse 2008; Kessler et al. 1995), it highlights the importance of taking selection processes into account in research on expectations and mental health.

The results for perceived stress bring us to our second question: whether the association of educational expectations and attainment with mental health changes over time. Our results indicate that it does. When respondents were in their mid- to late-20s, educational attainments were more strongly associated with mental health than educational expectations. However, educational expectations took on heightened importance as respondents moved into their early 30s.

One possible explanation for this pattern is that high expectations are a proxy for general future orientations, optimism, and other related predispositions that are associated with better mental health (Scheier, Carver, and Bridges 1994; Taylor and Stanton 2007). These predispositions may directly improve mental health and may also encourage resilience in the face of stressors (Carver, Scheier, and Segerstrom 2010). Indeed, optimism appears to contribute uniquely to stress resilience, independent of other personal resources, such as self-esteem (Andersson 2012). Our analysis suggests that future expectations, if understood as a proxy for optimism, exert their role cumulatively over time, presumably because they are concerned with long-range future life plans (Hitlin and Elder 2007).

Alternatively, youth with high expectations may be motivated to succeed socioeconomically even if they do not achieve expected levels of education (Hitlin and Johnson 2015). The motivated attainments of these youth may not yet be observable in the younger adult years because the young adults have not yet had time to pursue alternative paths to success. If this explanation were true, the association of expectations with mental health should have been reduced by controlling other indicators of young adult SES, with a more pronounced reduction at wave 4 than at wave 3. The results from the last part of our analysis were consistent with this explanation, although only weakly. Controlling young adult SES contributed little to reducing the associations of expectations with depression in both waves and only a small amount to reducing the association of expectations with perceived stress in wave 4.

In the last part of our analysis, we also considered whether adult social roles explained the associations of attainments and expectations with mental health. As was true for adult SES, adult social roles contributed little to explaining the associations of attainments and expectations with depression and provided a partial explanation for the associations with perceived stress. The weak explanatory power of adult social roles reflects the lack of alignment between these roles and the expectation-attainment configurations that are associated with mental health. For example, young adults who had enrolled in college reported lower levels of depression at wave 3. Those same young adults were least likely to be working full-time, but working full-time was associated with lower levels of depression. Similarly, young adults who expected to attend college reported lower levels of depression and stress at wave 4, but adult social roles did not differ systematically based on expectations. In short, the associations of educational expectations and attainments with role statuses do not align cleanly with their associations with mental health.

We acknowledge several limitations in our analysis. First, as noted previously, our analysis of adult social roles did not take into account the timing of role entry, the context, or role combinations, all of which may have contributed to the failure of adult social roles to explain the associations of expectations and attainments with mental health. Because we were not able to capture the details of entry into adult roles, we could not establish the relative temporal ordering in relation to educational attainment. The context of role transitions (e.g., whether entry into the labor market was planned or unplanned) likely conditions the relevance of adult social roles to the associations of expectations and attainments with mental health. Our measures of adult social roles also did not account for specific role combinations (e.g., unmarried parent) that may be more strongly predictive of early adult mental health (Silva 2012). In addition, we were not able to consider the expectation-attainment gaps for other life domains, such as employment and parenthood, a limitation that is in part due to data (i.e., Add Health does not provide future expectations regarding employment, parenthood, etc.). Future research on expectations and attainments would benefit from more nuanced measures of expectations and attainments regarding adult social role occupancy.

Second, although we attributed differences in the wave 3 and wave 4 results to life course development, we cannot rule out the possibility that they are a function of unmeasured historical effects. Wave 3 was conducted in 2001–2002 and wave 4 in 2008, during the Great Recession. College enrollment increased during the Great Recession such that the educational advantages of youth from more stable and affluent backgrounds were magnified (Cozzolino, Smith, and Crosnoe 2018). While that may be true, family background contributed little to explaining the associations of expectations and attainments with mental health in either wave, suggesting that this change, in and of itself, had few implications for our results. More plausibly, changes in the labor market between waves 3 and 4 could have heightened the importance of high expectations, optimism, and similar predispositions for mental health. The labor market was less welcoming of college graduates during the Great Recession, and the level of mental health problems among young adults increased (Alam and Bose 2022; Aronson, Callahan, and Davis 2015). Youth who were able to maintain optimistic orientations during that time were less likely to experience unemployment (Vuolo, Staff, and Mortimer 2012) and may, as a result, have experienced lower levels of depression and perceived stress. Because we were not able to include an indicator of job loss, we cannot eliminate this possibility. In short, the specific economic context in which our respondents made the transition to adulthood may have shaped their perspectives, preferences, and outcomes in ways that our analysis could not account for.

Despite these limitations, our analysis provides new insight into the role of expectations, attainments, and the gap between the two in relation to mental health. Together with other research on the role of expectations in life outcomes (e.g., Hitlin and Elder 2007; Hitlin and Johnson 2015), it encourages greater attention to the changing meanings of life circumstances over time and to predispositions in the construction of life course trajectories.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-spq-10.1177_01902725231161072 – Supplemental material for Educational Expectation-Attainment Gaps and Mental Health over the Early Adult Life Course

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-spq-10.1177_01902725231161072 for Educational Expectation-Attainment Gaps and Mental Health over the Early Adult Life Course by Eun Hye Lee and Jane D. McLeod in Social Psychology Quarterly

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Emily Ekl, Max Coleman, Benjamin Gallati, Nicholas Smith, Fritz Handerer, Søren Krogh, and the SPQ reviewers and editors fortheir feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Funding

This research is based on data from the Add Health project, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry (PI) and Peter Bearman, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Persons interested in obtaining data files from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (addhealth@unc.edu). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

ORCID iD

Eun Hye Lee

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

1

Aspirations and expectations are distinct. Aspirations refers to idealized hopes for the future. In contrast, expectations are based in individuals’ lived realities, constituting their realistic sense of the future. We focus on expectations rather than aspirations, as do most studies in this area. As demonstrate, failing to meet realistic expectations is more distressing than failing to meet idealized hopes.

2

Following a reviewer’s suggestion, we added a control for whether respondents were currently in school in each wave. The addition of this variable did not alter our results. We did not include this variable in our final models because controlling for school enrollment complicates our interpretations for wave 3 outcomes inasmuch as college enrollment itself is the outcome at wave 3.

3

In fall 2001, more than 72 percent of enrolled undergraduate students were under the age of 30 (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics 2017) and almost 87 percent of students who received their first bachelor’s degree in 2008 were under the age of 30 ().

4

Some of the items in the PSS overlap with the Pearlin Mastery Scale (). Accordingly, any observed associations with the PSS may, in part, reflect associations with mastery.

5

We reran our analyses with parental education and family public assistance variables calculated using information solely based on the first wave; these analyses produced the same substantive results as reported here.

6

We ran supplementary models using a cutoff of 5 to define expected college enrollment. In those models, the interaction between expectations and attainment was significant (columns 1 through 3). Young adults who expected to attend college reported significantly lower levels of depression if they attended college than if they did not. The interaction became nonsignificant in the presence of controls for prior health (column 4).

7

Following a reviewer’s suggestion, we considered whether or not the associations differ by gender. In supplementary analyses (Table S7 in the online appendix), we observed a significant three-way interaction between expectation, attainment, and gender when predicting depression at wave 3. Specifically, male respondents who expected to attend college reported significantlylower levels of depression if they attended college than if they did not. In contrast, no such an interaction was found among female respondents.

8

In models using a cutoff of 5 to define college expectations, the interaction between expectations and attainment was not significant. Here, too, the association of expectations with perceived stress was reduced, but remained significant, in the presence of controls for family background and prior health.

Bios

Eun Hye Lee is a PhD candidate in sociology at Indiana University-Bloomington. Her research interests include family processes, social psychology, mental health, and cultural sociology. Her dissertation research examines the role of educational expectations in shaping adult attainments and mental health over the life course.

Jane D. McLeod is provost professor of sociology and executive associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University. She was honored with the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health, the James R. Greenley Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociology of Mental Health in 2014, and the Cooley-Mead Award in 2022. Her current research (with Andy Halpern-Manners) focuses on educational, occupational, and health trajectories for autistic college students as compared with their neurotypical peers.

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