Due to higher tuition costs, luxury dating in Canada rises in popularity
By Jessica Berget, Editor-in-Chief
Becoming a “sugar baby”—someone who exchanges their company for money or gifts—has become increasingly popular for students in Canada as of late. With the financial pressure of school and tuition costs, many students are opting for this path to secure their financial futures and to avoid debt after graduation.
One such website for people to find more out about “luxury dating” is SeekingArrangement, a sugar daddy dating website. Website CEO Brandon Wade states in an article for the Vancouver Sun that a 40 percent increase in tuition costs may be reason for the site’s popularity among college students.
According to SeekingArrangement, the largest “sugar daddy dating site,” the number of Canadian university student who seek out sugar relationships rose 44 percent from last year. They also released a list of the fastest growing sugar baby universities in Canada for 2019. Douglas College did not make the list, but some of its sister schools did.
Placing at number one for the 2018 list was the University of Toronto—with an estimated 1,158 total number of students who are engaged in a sugar relationship. Closer to home, the University of British Columbia had 359 total students; The University of Fraser Valley had 175 students; Simon Fraser University had 486. The list for most members in 2019 did not have as much local representation as previous years, seeing how SFU had 270 and no other local universities made the list, but many new schools joined the list.
According to the previously mentioned article in the Vancouver Sun, the average age for a sugar baby is 26 years old. The average sugar daddy age is 41 years, and “daddies” usually have an annual income of around $250,000. A 2015 CBC article says that over 40 percent of sugar babies are students or graduates and that 34 percent of sugar daddies are married. The most common job for sugar daddies are tech entrepreneurs, CEO’s, developers, lawyers, financiers, and physicians, according to Radio Canada International. The most common occupations for sugar babies are students, actors, models, teachers, cosmologists, nurses, and flight attendants.
SeekingArrangement averages that Canadian sugar babies receive a monthly allowance of almost $3000, along with other benefits. Similarly, according to a 2010 Statistics Canada report, the average Canadian university student accrues more than $26,000 in student debt.
