The timing of adolescents' school-to-work transition in the course of social change: The example of German unification

The school-to-work transition has become more and more individualized over the last decades in the Federal Republic of Germany as in other Western ind ustrialized countries. As compared to the 1950s and 1960s, the current educ ational system in Germany offers a greater variety of school tracks, appren ticeships, and training programs and provides a greater permeability betwee n schools and programs. German unification offers a unique opportunity to s tudy the influence of social and economic change on the individualization o f the school-to-work transition, because change processes, resembling those over the last decades in the West, have been going on in the East in a tim e-lapse camera fashion. Using retrospective data on transitions gathered fr om Eastern and Western young adults from vocationally-oriented school track s in 1991 (representing pre-unification conditions) and 1996, three differe nt studies on the timing of key events in the school-to-work transition are presented, in the first study, aimed at the prediction of interindividual timing variability in transitions, the ages upon completion of training and financial self-support in the East were determined by structural factors s uch as the age at completion of school which, in turn, could only be predic ted by the age at entry into elementary school. In contrast, age variabilit y in the West was also influenced by person and family background variables . In the second study, it could be demonstrated that age variability with r egard to completion of school and achievement of financial self-support had markedly increased among younger cohorts of Easterners assessed in 1996 re flecting an increased variety of educational opportunities and labor market obstacles on the pathway to employment. In the third study, two factors, n amely prolonged education and unemployment as reflections of institutional and economic change in the East were identified which partly explained the increase in the average age at which Eastern young adults achieved financia l independence. All three studies aimed at building a link between properti es of the institutional and economic macro-contexts and the ages at key tra nsitions into employment representing comprehensive chronological outcomes, Between these poles, however, there are a multitude of transitional pathwa ys and patterns as well as personality and family factors operating on thes e patterns. A further inquiry into these psychological factors and mechanis ms is a valuable research goal for the future.