In 2019, in the EU as a whole, the at-risk-of-poverty rate was 23.0% among people with a “bad” financial situation in their household when they were around 14 years old. This percentage is 9.6 percentage points higher than the at-risk-of-poverty rate among those with a “good” financial situation in their childhood household.
This information comes from data published by Eurostat on intergenerational transmission of disadvantages from the EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) ad hoc module.
The at-risk-of-poverty rate for current adults with a bad financial situation in their childhood household ranged from 10.2% in Czechia to 40.1% in Bulgaria. On the other hand, the at-risk-of-poverty rate for current adults with a good financial situation ranged from 5.9% in Czechia to 16.6% in Spain.
In nearly all EU Member States, the at-risk-of-poverty rate was higher for people who had a bad financial situation in the past.
The largest differences were recorded in Bulgaria (27.6 percentage point difference between bad and good financial situations in the past), Romania (17.1 pp) and Italy (14.8 pp).
Interestingly, at the other end of the scale, the smallest difference of all was were recorded in Latvia (0.6 pp) and Austria (0.7 pp) as well as in Estonia (1.8 pp) and Finland (2.0 pp). In Denmark, the at-risk-of-poverty rate among people who had a good financial situation in the past was higher than people who had a bad financial situation.
It is worth noting that the situation does seem to have improved slightly during the last decade. In Latvia the at-risk-of poverty rate for adults (aged 25 to 59 years) by level of financial situation of their households when respondent was around 14 years old was 25.1% in 2011. This figure had fallen to 16.6% in 2019. Conversely, the rate for people describing their financial situation as 'good' changed from 18.3% in 2011 to 16.0% in 2019.
