Changes in Race-Ethnic Disparities from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

J. Richard Udry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

We follow a cohort of adolescents for six years into young adulthood, and show how race/cohort trends differ over the period. When shown developmentally, race/ethnic trends emerge that show how race disparities change with age. To make our comparisons we use data from Add Health wave 1 in 1995 and Wave 3 in 2001-2. Examination of race disparities and how they change from adolescence to adulthood reveals that the relative position of the race ethnic categories is unstable. Even by sex, the races show different disparities.