How do living arrangements affect the prevalence of jobless households across European regions?

Hafize Pinar Koksel, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Iñaki Permanyer, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED), UAB
Albert Esteve, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED), UAB

Jobless households are defined as households with all members out of employment. They are without access to earned income and at a higher risk of poverty and social exclusion. Although young people have the highest rates of unemployment of all age groups in Europe, they are the least likely to live in jobless households. Moreover, countries with the highest rates of youth unemployment are not the ones with the highest percentages of young people in jobless households. Diverging living arrangements can explain most of the variation in the prevalence of jobless households across Europe. We use the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) data for 24 countries and 184 regions for 2012 and run various multilevel logistic regression models to predict the probability of European youth to be in jobless households. Our results reveal that living arrangements play a major role to explain the cross-country and regional diversity in the prevalence of jobless households in Europe. Although their importance varies extensively across Europe, parents and spouses play an essential role to take the young unemployed out of jobless households.