Divergent pathways into adulthood in the Global South

Young people in the Global South are following increasingly diverse and ever-changing paths to adulthood. Yet, inequalities persist. Shelley Clark and Khandys Agnant show that despite impressive gains in female education, men and women follow strikingly different trajectories and women continue to find that marriage and paid work are often incompatible. 

In the Global South, transitions to adulthood (TTA) – when and whether young people finish school, become sexually active, form a union, have children, and find work –have changed over the past two decades (Clark and Agnant 2025) but show little convergence across regions or between genders. Despite marked regional variability and some increases over time, women typically make their reproductive and family transitions far earlier than men (Batyra and Kohler 2022; Melesse et al. 2021; Pesando et al. 2021). At the same time, while young men and women are spending more years in school, employment prospects, particularly for women, remain constrained (Ortiz-Ospina et al. 2023). These broad trends raise questions: How are young people in the Global South navigating transitions to adulthood? Are some transitions being delayed while others are accelerating? Are men and women pursuing increasingly similar or divergent pathways to becoming adults? 

Transitions are occurring later, but some are more delayed than others

Economic development, urbanization, and globalization have postponed key life transitions. Yet, Figure 1 shows that the ages at which young people in the Global South are making these transitions are not rising in tandem. In general, transitions such as school completion and union formation outpace milestones like sexual debut and childbirth. Consequently, the average age difference between finishing school and first sex has shrunk in all regions for women (panel a) and in some regions for men (panel b). In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), age of school completion and sexual debut have nearly converged, suggesting that many young men and women are now becoming sexually active while still in school. In other regions, sexual debut typically occurs after leaving school, but more quickly for women than for men. Further, as age of marriage rises, the number of young people  having sex and becoming parents before marriage is increasing. Men, in particular, become sexually active long before they marry.

Marriage lowers women’s participation in paid work and increases men’s

Despite rising education and delays in marriage, women do not always succeed in finding paid work and in several regions their employment rates have declined. This is likely because while marriage is an economic advantage for men, it remains a sizable career hurdle for women. Figure 2 shows that only about half of married women in LAC and Southeast Asia and less than 40% of married women in South Asia were employed in the first quarter of the 21st century. Not only are unmarried women more likely to be employed in all regions, but in Southeast Asia and Africa, the employment disadvantage for married women has even increased. In contrast, across all regions, married men are more likely than unmarried men to be employed, with 90% or more of married men currently working. These striking gender discrepancies show that women must often choose between forming a family and paid work, while men find these transitions mutually reinforcing.

Divergent pathways into adulthood: how men and women’s trajectories differ

Across the Global South, transitions to adulthood remain deeply gendered. Figure 3 reveals that men make nearly all transitions at substantially older ages than women and that they are much more likely to be employed. The only exception is in LAC, where men tend to become sexually active at younger ages than women. Despite some reduction of gender inequalities in education across all regions, there are large and often growing gender differences in age at union formation and age at parenthood. There is also no evidence of convergence in men’s and women’s paid employment. Indeed, by 2023, men were 25 to 55 percentage points more likely than women to be currently employed across all regions. 

Conclusions

Despite two decades of significant social and economic change and strong gains in education for both women and men across regions, changes in the timing of other transitions have been modest, and employment has stagnated and even declined for women. These findings cast doubt on whether this generation of young adults will succeed in either reducing gender inequalities or accelerating economic growth. Women continue to assume adult roles at much younger ages than men and often find that their transitions into marriage and motherhood are incompatible with being employed. Increasing female labor force participation, therefore, will likely require specific programs and interventions. Emerging research suggests that access to affordable, high-quality center-based childcare (Clark et al. 2019) and longer mandatory maternity leaves (Vu and Glewwe 2022) could substantially increase female employment. Yet, other pronatalist policies which offer incentives to marry or have more children, are likely to further impede women’s participation in paid work. Careful development of family and labor policies is therefore essential to address the large and often growing gender disparities in TTA and reap the economic benefits of women’s labor force participation.

References

Batyra, E., & Kohler, H.-P. (2022). Unequal Transitions to Adulthood: Widening Disparities in Age at First Union, Sex, and Birth in Many Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Studies in Family Planning, 53(3), 549–565. https://doi.org/10.1111/sifp.12211

Clark, S., & Agnant, K. (2025). Charting New Courses to Adulthood in the Global South. Population and Development Review, https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12711

Clark, S., Kabiru, C. W., Laszlo, S., & Muthuri, S. (2019). The Impact of Childcare on Poor Urban Women’s Economic Empowerment in Africa. Demography, 56(4), 1247–1272. https://doi.org /10.1007/s13524-019-00793-3)  

Melesse, D. Y., Cane, R. M., Mangombe, A., Ijadunola, M. Y., Manu, A., Bamgboye, E., et al. (2021). Inequalities in Early Marriage, Childbearing and Sexual Debut Among Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. Reproductive Health, 18(1), 117. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-021-01125-8

Ortiz-Ospina, E., Tzvetkova, S., & Roser, M. (2023). Women’s Employment. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/female-labor-supply. Accessed 23 November 2023

Pesando, L. M., Barban, N., Sironi, M., & Furstenberg, F. F. (2021). A Sequence-Analysis Approach to the Study of the Transition to Adulthood in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Population and Development Review, 47(3), 719–747. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12425

Vu, K., & Glewwe, P. (2022). Maternity benefits mandate and women’s choice of work in Vietnam. World Development, 158, 105964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105964