Press Statement

Preasráiteas

16 December 2020

Go to release: SILC Module on the Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantages 2019

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (16 December 2020) issued results from the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2019 Module on the Intergenerational Transmission of Disadvantages.

Commenting on the report, Eva O’Regan, Statistician, said: ‘This report explores how a person’s household circumstances as a teenager are associated with poverty indicators in later life. Respondents were aged 25-59, thus information pertaining to the respondents’ teenage household spans 35 years from the mid-1970s to 2009 depending on the age of the respondent.

Respondents were more likely to attain a third level education if at least one of their parents had also done so. More than three in four (77.9%) respondents whose parents had a third level education went on to attain a third level education by 2019, compared with one in four (27.2%) respondents whose parents’ highest level of education was lower secondary (NFQ Level 3, Junior/Inter/Group Cert., FETAC Level 3 Cert., FÁS Introductory Skills, NCVA Foundation Cert. or equivalent) or below. Of respondents whose parents had a third level education, 6.2% were at risk of poverty as adults, compared with 16.2% of those whose parents’ highest level of education was lower secondary.

Respondents who grew up in a household where either one or both parents worked were more likely themselves to be working as adults. In 2019, almost three in five (58.3%) respondents who lived as teenagers in households with no working parents were themselves working. This compares with more than four in five (81.8%) respondents who as teenagers lived in households with two working parents.

Financial disadvantage in childhood appears to persist into adulthood. People who described the financial situation of their teenage home as bad were less likely as adults to be working or have a third level education, and more likely to be at risk of poverty or living in enforced deprivation.

Three in five (61.9%) respondents with a bad financial situation in their teenage home were working in 2019, compared with four in five (79.5%) of those with a good teenage financial situation as a teenager.

Of respondents who described the financial situation in their teenage home as bad, one in three (34.2%) had a third level education, compared with six in ten (62.4%) of those who described their teenage financial situation as good.

Where the financial situation in the teenage home was described as bad, the at risk of poverty rate for adults in 2019 was 18.2% and the enforced deprivation rate was 39.0%. In contrast, where the financial situation in the teenage home was described as good the at risk of poverty rate for adults in 2019 was 8.4% while the enforced deprivation rate was 10.1%.

People who had a positive financial situation in their household as a teenager had higher home ownership rates. For people who described the financial situation of their teenage home as good, 55.9% owned their home in 2019 compared with 46.6% of those who described it as bad.’

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