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.