socialization begins at birth, it has generally led to an increasingly sharp differentiation

of roles, behaviors, and expectations beginning at the time boys and girls experience
puberty and continuing through the assumption of adult roles. This process of
socialization is reinforced through social norms, laws, and institutions that in many
countries progressively restrict the mobility and public participation of adolescent girls
and in some settings makes them seemingly invisible while providing expanded liberties,
opportunities, and agency for adolescent boys. Boys and girls usually enter adulthood
having experienced differences in the duration and content of schooling, having taken up
different work roles in the home and workplace, and having been offered different
opportunities for community participation. Furthermore, young women typically assume
adult family roles sooner than young men because they marry younger, while young men
often assume more public adult roles sooner through their participation in work and their
greater opportunities for leadership in schools, communities, work, and sports.
These broad statements capture only the average tendencies for young people in
developing countries. At the same time that young people everywhere are becoming part
of a more integrated world, at least some people in every country are experiencing
transitions to adulthood that increasingly resemble those that are typical of young people
in developed countries. But differential rates of change have led, in some cases, to
growing differences among adolescents within and across countries, as some young
people
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Suggested Citation:"PART I Introduction and Conceptual Framework--1 Introduction." National Research

Council and Institute of Medicine. 2005. Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in
Developing Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11174.

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experience progress and others are left behind. Although poverty rates have been
declining for developing countries as a whole, significant fractions of young people still
live in poverty. Trends in poverty rates vary across regions, with big declines in Asia but
an increase in poverty in Africa. In the panel’s view, the successful achievement by 2015
of many of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals will require that policy
makers center their attention on adolescents (see Box 1-1).
Critics of globalization argue that it has been associated with growing income
inequality and social polarization, as some local participants in global change improve
their economic situation while the livelihoods of others remain largely unchanged or
decline (see, for example, Milanovic, 2003; United Nations, 2004; Wade, 2004). Over
time the situation of those left behind may actually deteriorate, as their skills and assets
become less
BOX 1-1
Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals are a set of time-bound and measurable goals and
targets designed to address the world’s most compelling human development problems.
Adopted by world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, they
are now at the heart of the global development agenda. By adopting the United Nations
Millennium Declaration, the international community pledged itself to eight development
targets by 2015:
 Halve extreme poverty and hunger
 Achieve universal primary education
 Empower women and promote equality between women and men
 Reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds
 Reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters
 Reverse the spread of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria
 Ensure environmental sustainability
 Create a global partnership for development, with targets for aid, trade, and debt relief
Although for the most part not explicitly addressed, implicit in many of the Millennium
Development Goals is the need for greater attention to services for young people. For example,
greater investments in education and health, particularly for girls, is essential for reducing
poverty, lowering infant and child mortality, and achieving greater lifelong gender equality.
Similarly for a variety of reasons, slashing maternal mortality by three-quarters and reversing
the spread of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, will necessarily require far greater attention be
paid to reproductive health services for young people. Finally, creating a global partnership for
development will go a long way toward sustaining a healthy growth in job opportunities for
young people.
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Suggested Citation:"PART I Introduction and Conceptual Framework--1 Introduction." National Research

Council and Institute of Medicine. 2005. Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in
Developing Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11174.

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and less valued. Relative and absolute poverty may increase within countries as well as
across them. Growing economic inequality has reverberating consequences for the next
generation. Young people growing up in poverty are the most vulnerable to the negative
consequences of globalization and are in the greatest need of protection and support.
The very different demographic, political, and economic circumstances of countries
throughout the developing world mean that the experiences of today’s young people, and
the implications of globalization for them, vary enormously. From young women in
garment factories in Bangladesh, to child soldiers in Sierra Leone, to university students
in Mexico, to unemployed youth in refugee communities in Palestine, to young workers
in the Silicon Valley of India, to family farm workers in Egypt, to young Pakistani
migrant workers in the Persian Gulf, to young wives of polygamous husbands in Senegal,
one can only begin to imagine the range of experience that these examples encompass.
Indeed, the diversity of experiences can only be growing, as traditional roles persist,
albeit experienced in qualitatively different ways than in the past, and at the same time
new opportunities and experiences emerge. Young people are adaptable and continue to
demonstrate resilience in handling the contradictions of today’s world. However, the
challenge is to ensure successful transitions to adulthood in these rapidly changing
circumstances and to spread opportunities for success more equitably given the enormous
gaps that persist between rich and poor and between boys and girls. Policies and
programs, if they are to be effective, will need to be evidence-based, appropriate to the
local context, and embraced and supported by the local community.
THE PANEL’S CHARGE
Recognizing the critical gaps in knowledge of the transitions to adulthood in developing
countries in this time of rapid change, the National Academies convened a panel of
experts to review the research in this area and related implications for policies and
programs. Specifically, the panel’s charge was to
 document the situation and status of adolescents and young adults in developing
countries, highlighting what is known about various (and multiple) transitions to
adulthood, with special emphasis on gender differences;
 ascertain the changes that are occurring in the nature, timing, sequencing, and
interrelationships of transitions to adulthood in developing countries;
 assess the knowledge base regarding the causes and consequences of these
changes;
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Suggested Citation:"PART I Introduction and Conceptual Framework--1 Introduction." National Research

Council and Institute of Medicine. 2005. Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in
Developing Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11174.

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 identify the implications of this knowledge for policy and program interventions
affecting adolescent reproductive health; and
 identify research priorities that are scientifically promising and relevant for
integrating adolescent research and policy.
The charge to the panel was intentionally very broad because the National Academies
recognized that the transition to adulthood is multifaceted and comprises multiple and
interrelated transitions across different spheres of life. To implement the charge, the panel
reviewed knowledge on the full range of transitions to adulthood—schooling, health,
work, citizenship, marriage, and parenthood, as well as policies and programs affecting
all of these transitions. This was necessary because transitions are interrelated and
interventions directed at any single transition can affect other transitions. The panel
therefore addressed both the direct and indirect effects of policies and programs on
adolescent reproductive health, to the extent possible given existing research and data.
The juxtaposition of diversity in the lives of young people in less developed regions
and incomplete data coverage of the full range of contemporary experiences presented
special challenges to the panel. The recognition that a study, no matter how
comprehensive and empirically grounded, would inevitably neglect the experience of
some young people led the panel to set the study in a conceptual framework that is
neither time nor context specific. This allows the reader to adapt the framework
(presented in the next chapter) to an understanding of the lives of the many young people
whose stories will not be told or will be told only with respect to a specific time and place
that is undergoing rapid change. Furthermore, in assessing the experiences of young
people, the panel developed its own set of definitions of successful transitions to
adulthood against which the actual experiences of young people could be compared.
These definitions build on our understanding of adolescent development and of the
contemporary global context and provide an essential yardstick with which data and
research findings can be interpreted.