Childhood Predictors of Disconnection for Young Men and Women: Evidence from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study.

Although most young adults are working and/or in school, a significant share is disconnected - that is, neither employed nor enrolled in education or training. As of 2023, roughly 10% of America's young adults were disconnected, with wide-ranging implications for individuals, families, and society. A broad body of research has begun to identify factors associated with disconnection, yet much of this evidence relies on foreign samples, older U.S. cohorts, or data beginning in adolescence - limiting its relevance to contemporary young adults and its ability to detect factors that emerge early in the life course. The aim of this paper is to provide new evidence about factors in childhood and adolescence that are associated with disconnection, so that young people at risk can be identified earlier and provided with appropriate preventive services. We do so by leveraging longitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a birth cohort study of 4,898 children born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities. Using multivariate logistic regression, we examine a wide range of factors spanning family background, preschool attendance, vocabulary skills, school connection, school failure, discipline, systems involvement, and childhood poverty. We find that factors associated with increased risk of disconnection emerge early and accumulate across childhood, but we also identify several factors - including maternal employment, extracurricular participation, adolescent employment, and high school completion - that are associated with a lower likelihood of disconnection. Importantly, factors associated with disconnection differ substantially by gender: local unemployment rates and poverty are more strongly associated with disconnection for young men, while early parenthood is particularly strongly associated with disconnection for young women. Racial and ethnic differences further moderate these gender specific patterns. These findings underscore the need for early, gender-responsive interventions throughout childhood and adolescence to address disconnection risk.