The difference between soviet and post-soviet generations’ transitions to adulthood in Russia

Estonian Institute for Population Studies, Tallinn University , 2017. № 66.

Mitrofanova E.

This working paper investigates how Russian men and women from different generations experience their first demographic and socioeconomic events which mark the transition to adulthood. The study uses a panel of the Russian part of the “Generations and Gender Survey” (2004, 2007, 2011; 4,943 respondents) and Russian survey “Person, Family, Society” (2013; 4,344 respondents). Using sequence analysis tools, we analysed the biographies of generations born in 1930–1995. Our analysis reveals the differences between sexes and changes across generations. Socioeconomic life course events are achieved faster than demographic events. Men demonstrate behaviours oriented more toward economic independence, but they do not spend less time on education than woman. Women of older generations behave differently from men in the socioeconomic sphere of life: they tend to separate from their parents first, rather than start working or complete their education. Women of younger generations rely more on themselves economically. Women start to experience demographic events earlier and more intensively than men, but at the age of 35 they more often appear to be single mothers. Young people, compared to older generations, much more actively enter cohabitations and even have children in them, but they usually delay childbearing to later ages. They have more diverse trajectories in both demographic and socioeconomic spheres of life. We can see deinstitutionalisation in the trajectories of young people.

Keywords: Россия, Russia, жизненный путь, поколения, life course, sequence analysis, анализ последовательностей, transition to adulthood, generations, demographic events, переход во взрослую жизнь, демографические события