Are there any long-term consequences of poverty?

Abstract

Earlier research has shown that poverty is associated and clustered with other welfare problems. However, less is known about the long-term consequences of being poor. In this explorative study, Swedish longitudinal data, collected 1998 and 2006 has been used to examine whether there are any long-term effects on several indicators of living conditions. With logistic regression models, we predicted 14 indicators of bad living conditions in 2006. We measured poverty using income (< 60% below median income) and deprivation (Weighted Deprivation Index) in 1998. Estimates were also adjusted for demographical control variables and poverty in 2006. Findings from this study indicated that among those categorized as poor 1998 the risk of being deprivation poor or income poor in 2006 was significantly higher (Adj. OR 4.63, 3.07 respectively). Furthermore, we found that especially deprivation poverty had long-term consequences on materialistic and economical living conditions, while less effect on social, health, political and victimization. Income poverty was shown to be having little or no effect on either of the examined living conditions in this study. Therefore we argue that poverty has long-term effects in two ways, first an increased risk of future poverty and secondly an increased risk of bad materialistic and economic living condition in 2006. However, since research is limited, further research is needed to validate these results.