Barnes, Matt; Brown, V; Parsons, Samantha; Ross, Andrew; Schoon, Ingrid; Vignoles, Anna; (2012) Intergenerational transmission of worklessness: Evidence from the Millennium Cohort and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. (Research Report DFE-RR23 ). Department for Education: London, UK.

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Abstract

This project investigated the extent of parental worklessness in families with young and teenage children, and determined how parental worklessness impacts on children’s cognitive ability, education attainment, behaviours, attitude to school, academic aspirations and experience of the transition from school to work. We found that parental worklessness was significantly associated with: • poorer academic attainment and behavioural adjustment of young children (at age 7) • poorer academic attainment (GCSE point scores) of young people (at Key Stage 4 (KS4)) • with being not in education, employment and training (NEET) and with being NEET for longer (months spent in NEET) in late adolescence. This result was obtained even after allowing for a number of other socio-economic risks facing these children and young people (e.g. low income, low parental education level). Though it must be stated that much of the association (but not all) between parental worklessness and these outcomes was attributable to these other risk factors facing workless families. Parental worklessness had no independent effect on a number of other outcomes, such as children’s wellbeing (not being happy at school, being bullied and bullying other children), feelings of lack of control, becoming a teen parent, and risky behaviour. This evidence provides limited support for a policy agenda targeted only at getting parents back into work. It was generally not parental worklessness per se that caused poorer outcomes in childhood and adolescence but rather the complex needs and numerous socio-economic risks faced by workless families. Our report cannot determine whether we should tackle the underlying sources of these risks (e.g. family poverty, poor parental education etc.) or deal directly with the consequences of these risks (e.g. poor achievement of young people at KS4; experience of NEET). What our research does clearly show is that policy needs to not only target getting parents back into work but also to address the other risks that these children and their families face.

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