Middle childhood and adolescent contextual and personal predictors of adult educational and occupational outcomes: A mediational model in two countries.

摘要

The authors examined the prediction of occupational attainment by age 40 from contextual and personalvariables assessed during childhood and adolescence in 2 participant samples: (a) the Columbia CountyLongitudinal Study, a study of 856 third graders in a semirural county in New York State that began in1960, and (b) the Jyva¨skyla¨ Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, a study of 369eight-year-olds in Jyva¨skyla¨, Finland, that began in 1968. Both samples were followed up duringadolescence and early and middle adulthood. Structural modeling analyses revealed that in bothcountries, for both genders, children’s age 8 cognitive–academic functioning and their parents’ occupationalstatus had independent positive long-term effects on the children’s adult occupational attainment,even after other childhood and adolescent personal variables were controlled for. Further, childhood andadolescent aggressive behavior negatively affected educational status in early adulthood, which in turnpredicted lower occupational status in middle adulthood.