Children in jobless households across Europe: Evidence on the association with medium- and long-term outcomes

The proportion of children living in a jobless household is a key indicator of social exclusion across Europe. Yet there is little existing evidence on the extent to which this measure of childhood deprivation is associated with later life outcomes. We use two harmonised cross-national data sources, the European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) from 2011 and the Programme for International Student Attainment (PISA) from 2012, to address this question. We consider the association between children experiencing jobless households and three medium- and long-term outcomes: education, adult worklessness and adult poverty. We find evidence of large penalties to experiencing a jobless household in childhood across all three outcomes in some countries while in other countries there is no longer-term consequences of this indicator of social exclusion. Countries with high levels of children in jobless households such as the UK, Belgium and Ireland typically have more severe penalties for the medium- and longer-term outcomes of those children, although this varies by gender. This research suggests that this is a powerful measure of social exclusion, predicting severely limited life chances for the next generation.