What, if any, measurements determine maturity, and what entails from its measurement?

[Arch0wl]

A lot of policy decisions, such as drinking laws or age of consent laws, are made at least partially on the basis that someone is less mature or more mature, or acts older according to some standard of how older people should act. But maturity isn't really demonstrated here, so much as assumed. It's assumed that when you get older, you mature -- whatever this means.

So, one: how would you measure this?

Two: what are the implications of this if you could?

Two is more of a problem than you think, since this is basically the entire basis for age of consent laws. If you can really measure the kind of maturity necessary to have sex and actually put restrictions on this basis into practice, then some people would be really advanced for their age and able to consent under your definition, and some people would be so developmentally stilted that they could never have sex.

I don't think that maturity is a well-defined concept for this reason -- an example of well-defined concepts would be Big Five personality traits. Maturity is kept vague because much of society has an interest in keeping it vague, in other words.

But hey, if you disagree, let me know why. If it has been defined in measurable and reliable terms somewhere, I'd like to know about this.