Intergenerational Poverty Persistence in Europe - is there a Great Gatsby Curve for Poverty?

Part of the International Social and Public Policy Seminar Series
Hosted by the Department of Social Policy on 25 January 2024

Presenter: Professor Brian Nolan (Nuffield College, University of Oxford)
Chair: Dr Thomas Biegert (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: While the influence of poverty in childhood on a wide range of adulthood outcomes has been extensively studied, little is known about how the strength of intergenerational persistence in poverty itself varies across countries. Here we examine the intergenerational persistence of poverty in a comparative analysis of 30 European countries using data from the 2019 ad hoc intergenerational module of the EU-SILC dataset. We construct measures of poverty in the parental household employing information from this module on inability to meet basic needs and financial hardship in the parental home as well as parental education and occupational social class. The strength of the association between current poverty based on the indicators at the core of the EU's social inclusion process and these measures of parental poverty is assessed and compared across countries. While some relationship with standard geographical or welfare regime clustering of countries is seen, there is also substantial variation in the strength of intergenerational poverty association within such groupings. That association tends to be stronger where current or parental poverty are higher, in an analogue of the much-discussed Great Gatsby Curve with respect to income inequality.