Societal Transformation in Norway and Change in the Life Course Transition Into Adulthood.

This article aims to understand the historical and societal circumstances under which age becomes a more important basis of social organization, as cited in the case in Norway. Since World War I Norway has been transformed from a predominantly rural into a highly industrialized urban society, making it an ideal site for examining the relationship between industrial change and the temporal organization of the life course. Of all the primordial bases of social organization, namely age, sex, and race, the least well understood is age. Census manuscripts were analyzed for late nineteenth century Philadelphia and public use tapes for the U.S. in 1970. They focused on historical change in the transition from youth into adulthood. Temporal features of the demographic life events that marked the boundary between adulthood and youth include the prevalence of a transition, timing and spread of a transition, age-congruity of a pair of transitions, and integration. Other dimensions of the life course include reversibility and order. Such data were cross-sectional, not longitudinal, age patterns of exit from school, entrance into the work force, departure from the family or origin, marriage, and the establishment of a household.