›› South Carolina Young Adults Count State Report

Preface

The Young Adult Years
In 1996, the South Carolina Kids Count Project and its partners began an investigation into the lives of young adults. It has been said repeatedly that children are our future. Therefore, as yesterday's children, today's maturing youth should now be recognized as critical to our society and well worth our study and understanding.

Because previous Kids Count reports have addressed children and youth under age 18, this report on young adults starts generally with age 18 and covers not only the early young adult years but also the upper 20s. Age 18 is a logical starting point, since at this time most youth are either graduating or are close to their departure from school. While it is easy to select the typical age of leaving high school as the beginning of young adulthood, there is no easy answer regarding how many age brackets to include and when young adulthood is over.

Our report selects today's young adults ages 18 to 29 as its primary focus. These young adults were born between 1969 and 1980. This time span must be expanded further to utilize data on young adults throughout the 1990s, including the 1990 Census which provides the most recent data for some critical matters. Since persons aged 29 in 1990 would have been conceived in 1960, our report typically presents data on persons born between 1960 and 1980. Today these persons range in age from 18 to 39.

Note to Readers
To reduce the main body of the report, some quotes and data have been moved into the Appendix. An important section entitled Retrospective on the Childhood and Adolescence of Today's Young Adults has been placed at the end of the Appendix so that the readers will find it easier to concentrate on the challenges of young adulthood. Furthermore, the very long list of references will be posted on our web site or can be obtained from our office upon request. Instead, this report simply recommends a few key books for readers wanting to learn more about young adults.

This report is unique in its comprehensive, fact-based investigation of young adulthood and its focus on one state rather than the nation. Young adulthood has not been studied or reported on extensively, as is the case for early childhood, adolescence, and aging. Readers are encouraged to communicate their additional insights to the primary author, A. Baron Holmes, bholmes@drss.state.sc.us or by phone to 803-734-2291. Your comments are needed to enhance our understanding and portrayal in future reports of the complex phenomenon of young adulthood.

This state summary is designed to be used as a background explanation for the relatively short young adults county reports which are similar in format to the Kids Count county reports. The young adults county reports will be posted on our website with the Kids Count reports.

As a final note to the readers, this report is longer than desirable for a summary document. Because comparable reports are not available on young adulthood, more data, text, and quotes from national experts have been included. Readers with limited time and interest may wish to skip long quotes, big tables, or sections of least interest. Readers wanting additional information on Education, Crime, and Health may wish to contact us to review the working papers from which this report has been produced.

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> Section 1: Introduction