Latent patterns of Transition to Adulthood in Moldova gender-to-gender, generation-to-generation

Abstract

The Transition to Adulthood (TA) patterns are sometimes classified into two broad categories: modern and traditional (Billari & Liefbroer, 2010). This classification is usually confirmed by the research of trends of the age of transition events: the first childbirth, the first marriage, the first employment, etc. In this paper, I try to do such classification for the Moldovan 1941 – 1985 birth cohorts. I apply the Latent Profile Analysis to the Gender and Generation Survey of 2020 to cluster by the means and variance of the events and their covariances. To account for the powerful crisis that happened in 1990, I use two cohort subsamples; to account for the differences between gender’s transition to adulthood, I also divide between men and women. I find three profiles for three subsamples and four profiles for the 1941 – 1956 male cohort. In every subsample, there is a group with a clearly traditional timing of events. The “more modern” patterns of transition to adulthood are more difficult to classify.