Magyar_Ifjusag_2012_tanulmanykotet

Hungarian Youth 2012generally to the choice of values: deliberate childlessness and solitude as alifestyle choice. These new patterns will transform and modify the conceptionalframework of post-adolescence and will eventually lead to the substantialalteration of demographic attitudes.Ádám Nagy: The paradigm of defining youth age groupsbased on individual courses of lifeThe basic question dealt with by Ádám Nagy’s piece is the extent to whichlarge-sample youth surveys, such as Hungarian Youth 2012’s target group(young people between the age of 15 and 29) actually describe the group wecall “youth”.In the study, the author compares groups that can be viewed as maturealong three (biological, psychological and social) dimensions of maturity byage category (15-19; 20-24; 25-29). The analysis of connections reflects thatalthough age is a characteristic factor, only fifty to sixty per cent of youngpeople’s age is consistent with the various dimensions of maturity. The majorityof 15 to 29-year-olds can be described as biologically and psychologicallymature, with 46 per cent of respondents mature in a psychologicalsense. Social maturity is characteristic of one-third (34 per cent) of the agegroup, meaning that every third member of the age group has already begunan independent life.The proportions disrupting conventional age categories to the greatestextent could be found in eccentric groupings; however, distributions of ageproduced unfitting members even in groups that could be decribed as traditional.Among traditional groups, intermediary categories such as adolescentsor young adults stand out as examples for this; four tenths of membersof the latter groups would be classified “falsely” by relating solely to age.According to the paradigm of defining youth age groups by individualcourses of life, traditional boundaries of age do not coincide with the conceptof youth in the 21th century. The notion described as biological, psychologicaland sociological maturity has become removed from age groups usedby statistical research, meaning that surveys produced by the collection ofstatistical data should be considered bearing certain cautions in mind.346