No. 2025-07 - Intergenerational Poverty in Europe: A Latent Class Analysis

Abstract:

This paper investigates the intergenerational transmission of poverty and how it varies across thirty European countries using retrospective reports on childhood household circumstances from the 2019 EU-SILC ad hoc intergenerational module. Latent class analysis is employed as it allows all the available information to be incorporated to estimate current and childhood poverty with a minimum of structure imposed. For each generation, the two latent classes distinguished are seen to be distinct in terms of the prevalence of disadvantage. The intergenerational association between current and childhood poverty is assessed via transition matrices and summary mobility indices. This shows substantial variation in the extent and nature of intergenerational association across the countries covered, with a high degree of consistency between. Household income is not available for the parental generation but omitting it from the latent class model for current poverty made little difference to the country mobility rankings.