CIS - Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas

This book presents the results of the analysis of data collected in the survey module conducted by the CIS (National Center for Statistics and Census) entitled Biographies of Emancipation, Generations, and Social Change in Spain. This module was designed to collect retrospective information with the aim of studying life trajectories in youth, based on the generations of men and women aged 18 and over, with a special focus on the emancipation process. All of this occurs within a context of limited generational data on youth and their emancipation processes. Emancipation has been considered in this study as a sum of processes involving different dimensions, among which leaving the parental home is one event within a complex "trajectory." The results obtained confirm empirical evidence found in other studies and also reveal novel aspects. The study also covers a wide range of very different generations that have undergone profound social changes in their trajectories toward adulthood. This places us in a novel context from which to resume the debate on emancipation in Spain. It is worth noting that the most significant changes are concentrated between the generations born before 1959 and those born after. The youth transitions of the most recent generations show a clear tendency toward greater complexity, with a greater presence of nonlinear and reversible paths. At the same time, we have found evidence that the trajectories of older generations were not as linear as previous studies have suggested. This work also provides solid evidence that women have been the protagonists of the most notable changes. Among them, the changes that have occurred between the older and younger generations are much more profound than those among men.