Similarity in Transition to Adulthood of Friends and School Mates

Citation

Barban, Nicola; Fasang, Anette E.; & Balbo, Nicoletta (2019). Similarity in Transition to Adulthood of Friends and School Mates. Population Association of America annual meeting. Austin, TX.

Abstract

Previous research on ‘linked lives’ has mainly focused on similarity in life course outcomes of parents and children, between siblings or spouses, neglecting the potentially powerful impact of friends and schoolmates. We use data from Add-Health to investigate the similarity of life course trajectories in the transition to adulthood of a national representative sample of young women in the US. Using recent methodological innovations in sequence analysis, we estimate similarity in life course trajectories among friends, school-mates and siblings. In the second part of the paper we combine sequence analysis to causal inference to estimate the effect of friends' life course transitions in respondents' transition to parenthood, marriage and cohabitation. Results indicate that friend' trajectories are more similar than random school-mates but less than siblings. Although friends seem to have a direct effect on transition to adulthood, the effect is reduced once we control for previous trajectories and other confounders.

URL

http://paa2019.populationassociation.org/abstracts/192445

Reference Type

Conference proceeding

Book Title

Population Association of America annual meeting

Author(s)

Barban, Nicola
Fasang, Anette E.
Balbo, Nicoletta

Year Published

2019

City of Publication

Austin, TX

Reference ID

7289