Adolescent agency and adult economic success in a transitional society

Following our previous research, we argue that weak societal institutions allow human agency factors to influence human behaviour strongly and, in particular, to affect how people coped with the collapse of Soviet institutions and responded to new opportunities that arose in the transition from communism. We chose Estonia as our study site because it had a “bottom‐up” transition that encouraged individual initiative and mass participation. Further, its state rapidly developed efficient, democratic institutions and legalized private ownership, which reorganized economic activity. Human agency factors include pre‐conditions (e.g., skills, education, goals), processes (e.g., making choices and factors affecting choices, such as self‐efficacy and locus of control), and previous agentic actions. We examined the impacts of adolescent abilities and goals, completed education, and economic activities in the first stage of the transition on economic success in the second stage using longitudinal data from the Paths of a Generation study. Respondents were interviewed around age 18 (in 1983) and again around ages 23 (in 1988), 28 (in 1993), 32 (in 1997), and 39 (in 2004). As hypothesized, we found evidence that adolescents' abilities affected both income in 2004 and income mobility between 1997 and 2004. Additional education completed after adolescence and economic activities reflecting individual initiative in the first stage of the transition also promoted economic success. Surprisingly, adolescent agency had noteworthy effects on the economic success of adults who were almost 40 years old and who had been reared and educated in a communist society with strikingly different institutions, norms, and values than those in Estonia in 2004.