Career success: the role of teenage career aspirations, ambition value and gender in predicting adult social status and earnings

Links between family social background, teenage career aspirations, educational performance and adult social status attainment are well documented. Using a contextual developmental framework, this article extends previous research by examining the role of gender and teenage ambition value in shaping social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. Drawing on data from an 18-year British follow up study we tested a path model linking family background factors (such as family social status and parental aspirations) and individual agency factors in adolescence (in particular, career aspirations and ambition value) to social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. The findings suggest that ambition value is linked to adult earnings. That is, young people for whom it is important to get on in their job earn more money in adulthood than their less ambitious peers. The findings also confirm that teenage career aspirations are linked to adult social status attainment, and suggest that family background factors, teenage career aspirations and ambition value interact to influence social status attainment and earnings in adulthood. Gender differences are discusse

Is uncertainty bad for you? It depends...

This article examines the role of rapid social change for human adaptation, focusing in particular on uncertainty in educational and career-related goals of young people born between 1970 and 1990. A review of the research evidence suggests that although most young people want to continue in higher education, more young people in the later-born cohort are uncertain regarding their occupational career destination than those in the earlier-born cohorts. Examining the longer-term consequences of teenage aspirations suggests that uncertainty can be beneficial or harmful, depending on the wider sociohistorical context in which decisions are made, the timing and urgency of imminent educational and career choices, the individual characteristics of the adolescents themselves, and the support available from parents and the wider social context. The findings are discussed in terms of development as action in changing contexts, taking into account how young people negotiate changing demands in an uncertain economic and social context