Search Results

Author: Huang, Wenxuan
Resulting in 2 citations.
1. Huang, Wenxuan
Individualized Choices or Unequal Opportunity? A Comparison of School-to-Work Transition Between GED and High School Graduates Using Innovative Sequence Analysis Approaches
Presented: Austin TX, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2019
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): GED/General Educational Diploma/General Equivalency Degree/General Educational Development; High School Diploma; Labor Force Participation; Labor Market Outcomes; Transition, School to Work

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Due to its "demographically dense" nature, transition to adulthood is widely studied to investigate de-/institutionalization of the life course in response to social changes. However, the de-institutionalized life course is less examined in the light of social inequality as opposed to the generalization of indiscriminate experience. Using NLSY97 data, this study compares the 15-year school-to-work sequences of two subgroups, i.e., GED and high school diploma holders to demonstrate whether a less institutionalized education qualification generates precarious labor market pathways. This study reports selected longitudinal and transversal characteristics of school-to-work sequences to showcase the differences in trajectories between these two groups. To move beyond descriptive level, this study employs two innovative sequence analysis techniques, i.e., discrepancy analysis of state sequences and implicative statistics of typical state. The results show that GED holders are more likely to fall into trajectories characterized by frequent state changes, instability and inactivity in labor market.
Bibliography Citation
Huang, Wenxuan. "Individualized Choices or Unequal Opportunity? A Comparison of School-to-Work Transition Between GED and High School Graduates Using Innovative Sequence Analysis Approaches." Presented: Austin TX, Population Association of America Annual Meeting, April 2019.
2. Huang, Wenxuan
Leisure to Explore or Failure to Launch? A Cohort Comparison of the Transition to Adulthood between Late Baby Boomers and Early Millennials
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, 2021
Cohort(s): NLSY79, NLSY97
Publisher: OhioLINK
Keyword(s): Educational Attainment; Employment, Intermittent/Precarious; Transition, Adulthood

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The heterogeneity of the timing and order of achieving the "big five" markers of the transition to adulthood is often treated as a taken-for-granted feature of emerging adulthood, reflecting a tendency of "leisure to explore" between adolescence and adulthood. With the central assumption of emphasizing how individuals take greater control of personal biographies in postmodern societies, the individualization thesis has also received wide acknowledgment in conceptualizing the changing patterns of the life course, especially when accounting for the growing heterogeneity in the pathways to adulthood. The first substantive chapter of this dissertation identifies an individualization-heterogeneity nexus in the current life course research on the transition to adulthood. It interrogates the conceptual pitfalls that distract researchers from understanding the real source of heterogeneity observed in the pathways to adulthood. The illustrative example shows that educational attainment stratifies the level of heterogeneity in school-to-work and family formation trajectories, which challenges the notion that individualized choice-making leads to the de-standardization of transition patterns. The two empirical chapters examine how structural inequality shapes early work-family trajectories and reveal how "failure to launch" pervades in an age of expanding precarity in the youth labor market. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 & 1997), the first empirical study compares the work-family trajectories between Late Baby Boomers and Early Millennials. By employing multichannel sequence analysis, this study identified seven distinct transition patterns reflecting mutual reinforcement of domain-specific dis/advantages. The cohort comparison suggests that Early Millennials are more likely than Late Baby Boomers to enter work-family trajectories characterized by labor market precarity, and there is no declining relevance of stratifying mechanisms such as gender and family background. The second empirical study documents the extent to which the two non-college-bound groups, i.e., high school graduates and GED recipients, are disconnected from the labor market throughout the entire early career among Early Millennials. It also identifies a substantial HS-GED gap in the labor market connection associated with multiple risk factors initially related to high school dropout. In sum, this dissertation conceptually clarifies and empirically tests how precarity drives the observed heterogeneity in the transition to adulthood.
Bibliography Citation
Huang, Wenxuan. Leisure to Explore or Failure to Launch? A Cohort Comparison of the Transition to Adulthood between Late Baby Boomers and Early Millennials. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, 2021.