Parental financial support: A safety net for young adults with debt problems

Abstract

Parental financial support benefits young adults in societies with decreasing welfare‐state support and a pattern of early home‐leaving. This article focuses on the association between young adults’ debt problems and parental financial support: the extent to which indebted young adults receive financial help from their parents. We also investigate the extent to which specific benefits are associated with debt problems or parental financial support. The data were gathered in an online survey conducted among 18‐to‐35‐year‐old Finns (n = 1,019). The results revealed, first, that many parents safeguard their indebted adult children’s lives by means of financial support and second, that heavy cash‐welfare‐benefit users are particularly likely to receive parental financial support. Our analysis also revealed that the prevalence of debt problems as well as of parental financial support were especially high among those who had received social assistance, sickness benefit or labour‐market subsidy within the previous 12 months. In a society open to new social risks as well as to debt problems, young people who lack financial support from their parents have a rockier transition to adulthood than those who receive support.

Single-Parent Families, Educational Gradient, and Child Deprivation: The Cases of Italy and Spain

“…In this regard, it is to be expected that single-parent families headed by mothers with a low level of education are more affected by a context of greater economic and employment precarity than two-parent families with the same educational level, given that not having high qualifications may accentuate the disadvantages that single-parent mothers must confront in the job market as a consequence of their greater difficulties in conciliating work and family life (Härkönen et al., 2016 ). Moreover, for single-parent mothers with a low educational level, economic support from their family may not be enough to compensate a large part of the differences in resources in comparison with two-parent families, given that such help tends to be smaller in families of low socioeconomic standing (Eggebeen & Hogan, 1990 ; Majamaa & Rantala, 2019 ). Therefore, the growth of single parenthood among women with low educational attainment in southern Europe could contribute to inequality between family types in terms of child deprivation.…”