The impact of poverty on the health and wellbeing of children has been highlighted in a new ESRI study.

According to the findings, living in poverty, particularly persistent poverty, can have a major impact on almost all key aspects of a child’s life, including health, emotional development, education, and life satisfaction.

Researchers looked at two cohorts from the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study – an ongoing study of around 18,000 children born in Ireland in 1998 and 2008. The participants are now aged about 13 and 23 years.

The researchers used a multi-dimensional measure of poverty that incorporates low income, deprivation and struggling to make ends meet. They found that poverty was a common experience for children and young people, with around 40% experiencing at least one spell between 2007 and 2017.

In around half of these cases, the families involved were persistently poor, while for the other half, poverty was transient or a one-off experience. Persistent poverty was more common among children living in one-parent families, or families with four or more children.

It was also more common among children whose mothers had a low education, were unemployed, had a disability or had an ethnic minority status.

The consequences of living in poverty were vast. It was associated with worse outcomes across almost all key aspects of a child’s life, including health behaviours, obesity, cognitive development, educational attainment, school engagement, social development, emotional development, self-concept, and life satisfaction.

For most of these outcomes, there appeared to be a cumulative effect – the more persistent the poverty was, the worse the outcome. However, even children who experienced poverty once had worse outcomes than children who were never exposed to poverty.

The study found that relationship breakdown was a key risk, with children 2.5-3.5 times more likely to experience poverty if a partner had left the household, compared to households where there was no change in partner.

Parents’ employment was also key, with maternal job loss as important as paternal job loss. The researchers also noted that while entering full-time work triggered an exit from poverty, taking up part-time work did not.

“There is a wide body of evidence that shows the detrimental effect of childhood poverty in both the short and longer term. This research highlights family and labour market events that trigger entry and exit from poverty, which can help inform policy interventions,” commented Dr Helen Russell, a research professor at the ESRI.

Meanwhile, the researchers pointed out that while the data used in this study was gathered before the Covid-19 pandemic, “the results underline the likely consequences of the current pandemic for children through parental unemployment, increased poverty and financial stress”.

They said that ESRI research has already demonstrated the importance of emergency pandemic supports, such as the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP), in preserving household income and preventing an increase in child poverty.

“The evolution and removal of these supports will need to be cognisant of the need to protect children and young people from the longer-term damaging impacts of even transient spells of economic vulnerability,” they added.

A report on the findings, The Dynamics of Child Poverty in Ireland, can be viewed here.