Past, present, and future dimensions of socioeconomic status and sexual self-efficacy of young women during the transition into adulthood

Hyungmin Cha

Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 306, issue C

Abstract: Socioeconomic disadvantages can undermine a person's ability to control their sexual lives (sexual self-efficacy) during the transition to adulthood. Most scholarship focuses on proximate circumstances, specifically how sexual self-efficacy is a result of current socioeconomic status. Yet, this sexual agency is embedded within much longer behavioral and psychological trajectories shaped by socioeconomic contexts. Therefore, I identify a novel explanation for sexual self-efficacy by connecting it to past, present, and anticipatory future conceptualizations of young adults' socioeconomic circumstances. Drawing from 2.5 years of quarterly data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life Study, I found significant associations between more advantaged past, present, and anticipatory future socioeconomic circumstances and greater sexual self-efficacy during the transition to adulthood. Stage-specific dimensions of socioeconomic status (SES) followed two life course patterns (pathways and accumulation). In addition, prospective SES was found to be a more powerful predictor than childhood and current SES. As such, I encourage researchers to conceptualize socioeconomic status in life course terms to illuminate the underlying causes and consequences of varying young adulthoods.

Keywords: Sexual self-efficacy; Socioeconomic status; Life course; Transition to adulthood; RDSL (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:306:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622004348

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115128

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