Is the likelihood of poverty inherited? - Issue number 27/2013 - Products Statistics in Focus

One of the headline targets of the Europe 2020 strategy for jobs and smart, sustainable and inclusive growth is the reduction of poverty by lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty or social exclusion by 2020. Poverty is a multidimensional socioeconomic phenomenon caused both by aggregated factors such as macroeconomic, social and labour policies and by individual factors like level of education, health or social interaction in society. The analysis of intergenerational disadvantages is aimed at measuring the extent of transmission or persistence of individual factors through generations. The European Union statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) 2011 data are used for the purpose of the analysis.