Transition to Adulthood in Finland and the United States

Abstract

Time use choices that promote challenge, concentration, and motivation are seen as developmentally enriching, while those that involve repetitive activities with little chal lenge are seen as less developmentally advantageous (Larson 2001). Historically, cultural traditions, social mores, and macroeconomic factors have exerted considerable influence on the time-use choices of adolescents. However, as countries have become increasingly linked through technology, media, and commerce, the influence of these country-specific factors may be waning. In this article, we address the question of whether adolescents' time use experiences is uniform, by comparing and contrasting adolescent time use in Finland and the United States. Both Finland and the United States are rich developed countries. Finland belongs to the social democratic welfare regime, while the United States has adopted the liberal welfare regime (Esping-Andersen 1999). Finland is a small, generally homogeneous country, in contrast to the United States, which is ethnically, racially and culturally diverse?and with greater income inequality (Brandolini and Smeeding 2008). Do these larger national dif ferences transcend the globalization of culture and commerce? To address this question, we use time-diary data from the Finnish Time Use Survey (Niemi and P??kk?nen 2001; Statistics Finland 2007) and the American Time Use Survey (ATUS, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2007). Twenty-four hour recall (U.S.) and pro spective (Finland) time diaries were gathered using standard methods in both surveys. The