Adulthood: To Be or not To Be, According to the SLID

Amélie A. Gagnon, Université de Montréal

To date, there is no consensus on the objective nature of social adulthood. Moreover, as mainstream culture shifts (generations are replaced, migration flows augment, not to mention the media offer), normative adulthood adjusts itself. Are the traditional markers of adulthood (to leave school, get a job, and get married) still relevant to study the transition to adulthood and its outcomes? We analyze the Canadian panel Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) and measure the 'adult' population via three aspects: (1) Financial (2) Emotional and (3) Residential independence. With a conventional approach of the transition to adulthood to create a composite indicator, results show that only a small proportion of 16-30 year-old Canadians can be considered as adults, and that this pattern varies when we break the data by gender and migratory status. Concluding remarks aims to reconcile the study of adulthood per se and the indicator to do so.