Our first aim is to show the connection between childhood problems and the risk of being in a low-income group in adulthood. Secondly, for young adults, we investigate the connection between negative life events that took place more than five years ago, and the risk of later being in a low-income group. How does these connections vary between different groups? We focus mainly on the following groups: Households with low income, social assistance recipients, disability pensioners, recipients of work assessment allowance, unemployed, lone parents, and persons with low education. There are two main data sources for the report: The EU-SILC survey 2019 and the Quality of Life surveys.

The great majority of persons belonging to the selected low-income groups have not experienced material or social deprivation in childhood. Still, there are clearly relative differences; persons who today are in low-income groups are overrepresented among those who have experienced material and social deprivations. As an example, the share of persons having a household income per consumption unit in the lowest quartile, rises from 16 percent among those with no exposure to childhood deprivations to 40 percent among those who have been exposed to three or more. We find similar differences for disability pensioners and persons receiving work assessment allowance and social assistance. When we control for demographic background factors, the strongest correlations with childhood deprivations are found for persons receiving disability pensions and having a low education. The odds of being a disability pensioner are close to four times as high among those who have experienced three or more deprivations at the age of 14, compared to the odds for persons without any such problems. The same difference is found concerning no education beyond primary school.

In the Quality of Life surveys, there are questions on other forms of deprivation than those in the EU-SILC survey, such as experiences with violence, It is found that the odds of belonging to a low-income group increases with each additional form of violence a person has been exposed to. Among persons who have experienced multiple forms of violence in the age group 25-40, it is particularly the odds of having low education and receiving disability pensions and work assessment allowance that are increased. Among the young aged 18-24 the analysis shows that being exposed to violence during childhood, increases the odds of receiving work assessment allowance and social assistance in early adulthood. The risk of not participating in neither work nor education is also higher among those exposed to different forms of violence. The consequences of sexual violence seem to be particularly serious. Having been forced to sexual intercourse, or experiencing the attempt to do so, in childhood is associated with a roughly fourfold increased odds of receiving social assistance and work assessment allowance., in addition to nearly a tripling of the odds for having low education.

When we add other life events to the violence events and count the total number of negative life experiences among persons aged 25-40, there is again a particularly strong association with health-related benefits. The odds of receiving a disability pension are between five and six times higher among persons who have experienced at least five negative life events earlier in the life course, compared to those with no experience of such events. In analyses where we control for own educational level, the associations with childhood problems and life events are mostly reduced. Childhood problems seem to have both a direct effect on the risk of belonging to a low-income group as an adult, and an indirect effect through reducing the chances of having education beyond primary school. We cannot, however, draw causal conclusions from the data sources used in this report.