Intergenerational poverty persistence in Europe and the Great Gatsby curve

Abstract:

The transmission of poverty across generations is a long-standing concern for national and EU-wide anti-poverty strategies. This column uses retrospective data for 30 European countries to compare the strength of the association between growing up in poverty and the risk of current poverty. Countries differ in the strength of this relationship: Scandinavian countries have low intergenerational poverty association, whereas Romania and Bulgaria have the highest. It also finds a positive relationship between intergenerational poverty persistence and parental poverty levels, which can exacerbate the reproduction of poverty across generations.