No Time for Youth: The Transition to Adulthood in Mexico, 1970-2000

Elizabeth Fussell, Tulane University

This research uses a new method of analyzing the demographic statuses (as students, workers, parents, husbands and wives, and their position in the household) of a synthetic cohort of young Mexicans to examine how the youthful life course has changed in Mexico during the past thirty years. Although young people spend slightly more time in school in 2000, the transition from school to work still occurs in the mid-teens. Marriage and childbearing continue to occur in the late-teens to early twenties. Only among urban men and women is there a prolongation of schooling and co-residence with parents. Overall, the lives of young people in 2000 do not look too different from those of their parent's generation who came of age thirty years before in 1970 in spite of the dramatic economic and demographic changes that have occurred during this period.