Intergenerational joblessness across Europe: the role of labour markets, education and welfare generosity

Paul Gregg and Lindsey Macmillan ()

No 20-11, CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

Abstract: Recent studies of intergenerational income mobility have used cross-area and cross-national variation in intergenerational elasticities to explore possible drivers of persistence in incomes across generations. We contribute to this literature, and the parallel literature on the effects of social exclusion, utilising a conceptual framework to explore the role of family factors (education and welfare generosity) and labour market conditions in accounting for intergenerational joblessness across Europe. Country-level differences suggest that lower expenditure on education and less generous welfare systems are associated with more intergenerational persistence in jobless spells across countries. We show that simple explanations, such as high unemployment and low education alone do not account for individual-level intergenerational joblessness. Instead, a combination of living in a jobless household in (late) childhood, low education and weak labour markets co-load to create penalties. Taken together, the individual- and country-level analysis point to multiple disadvantage creating persistence of deprivation across generations rather than individual risk factors. This suggests that a targeted and combined policy intervention is required to reduce such associations.

Keywords: Joblessness; Poverty; Education; Labour markets; Welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I38 J62 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2020-06, Revised 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucl:cepeow:20-11

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