While children's orientations to achievement are strong predictors of attainments, little is known about how parental economic hardship during recessionary times influences children's orientations to their futures. The Youth Development Study has followed a community sample of young people in St Paul, Minnesota from mid-adolescence through their mid-thirties with near-annual surveys, and has recently begun surveying the children of this cohort. Using linked parent and child data, the present study examines the relationship between parental economic hardship and children's achievement orientations in the aftermath of the recent "Great Recession." Initial OLS analyses draw on 345 parent-child pairs, with data collected from parents during their adolescence, during the decade prior to the recession, and in 2011, and from their children (age 11 and older) in 2011. Then, first difference models are estimated, based on a smaller sample (N=186) of parents and children who completed surveys in both 2009 and 2011. Our findings indicate that when families are more vulnerable, as a result of low parental education and prior parental unemployment experience, children's achievement orientations are more strongly threatened by the family's economic circumstances. For example, as parental financial problems increased, economic expectations declined only among children of the least well-educated parents. Low household incomes diminished educational aspirations only when parents experienced unemployment during the ten years prior to the recent recession. Parental achievement orientations, as adolescents, were also found to moderate the impacts of shifts in the family's economic circumstances. Finally, boys reacted more strongly to their parents' hardship than girls.

Grounded in social structure and personality, life course, and status attainment perspectives of social psychology, the Youth Development Study has followed a cohort of teenagers from the beginning of high school through their mid-thirties. Evidence for the effective exercise of agency derives from diverse adolescent work patterns leading to outcomes that are consistent with youth's earlier goals, motivations, and resources. Thus, the socioeconomic career begins well before the completion of formal education. The YDS has revealed multiple pathways of contemporary transition to adulthood, the circumstances surrounding parental residential and financial support to their transitioning children, and the cessation of deviant behavior as adult roles are acquired. Agentic pathways during this period are significant precursors of success during subsequent economic downturn. The new YDS Second Generation Study is well poised to address the impacts of parental trajectories on the adjustment and well-being of children.

We examine how work difficulties in the early career, and the generally deteriorating work conditions associated with the recent U.S. economic recession, shape individuals' work values. Drawing on panel data from the Youth Development Study, we test whether individuals change their work values in response to concerns about satisfying material needs or the features of jobs that they are able to attain. Results indicate that extrinsic values are weakened in the face of unemployment, as well as reduced job security, income, and advancement. These patterns support a reinforcement and accentuation model in which workers adjust their values to emphasize what they actually obtain from the job. Intrinsic values are weakened by working in a job unrelated to one's career plans; they are reinforced by the experience of greater intrinsic rewards and advancement opportunities.

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