In the current economic and social environment, a real challenge for youth is the acquisition and development of the relevant skills in entrepreneurship in order to consider entrepreneurship as a desirable employment choice. Given this aspect, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the main factors influencing students’ entrepreneurial intentions, paying particular attention to their entrepreneurial family background. Additionally, the paper aims to explore the effect of entrepreneurial family background on the relationship between effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention. We conducted a study where results were based on the outcomes of a survey among Romanian high school and university students in the final year (N = 617). Our four main hypotheses were tested through independent samples t-tests, correlation analysis, and hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The findings highlighted that the students with an entrepreneurial family background reported a higher entrepreneurial intention than those without such a background. The variables that positively influenced the entrepreneurial intentions of the students were entrepreneurial family background, effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, and entrepreneurial personality traits. Furthermore, this entrepreneurial family background negatively moderated the relationship between effectiveness of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention. For this reason, emphasis should be placed on both formal and informal entrepreneurial education, which will increase the propensity of young people to choose an entrepreneurial career.

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There has been a widely accepted belief that employment growth is fundamental in the fight against poverty and social exclusion. The existence of working poverty proves that even if employment growth still represents the best way to avoid poverty risk it is not always enough, actions being needed to create not only more jobs, but also better jobs. The aim of this paper is to highlight the main causes and mechanism of working poverty in the EU countries, in the recent economic crisis and recovery period (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012), in order to identify some possible measures that need to be taken so that in-work poverty reduces. The comparative analysis shows that the phenomenon of working poverty has been growing in sixteen EU countries and the prevalence of in-work poverty varies significantly across these countries. The correlation and regression analysis results suggest that gaps in the national human and economic development can be explained by disparities in working poverty rate. Vulnerable and precarious employment represents an important factor behind the high level of working poverty from the EU countries in the analysed period. By taking into consideration the cumulative influence of multiple socio-economic variables, for the (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012) period, results of principal components analysis and cluster analysis highlight that there are common features and differences between the EU Member States according to their working poverty, employment performances, efficiency of welfare state system and the level of human and economic development. The findings of this study can be useful for policy makers in order to reduce the phenomenon of working poverty.