PEOPLE who were brought up in poverty are at least twice as likely to be poor as adults as those who come from better-off homes, says a report today.

One in five people who were teenagers in the 1970s and whose parents were poor are poor as adults themselves, it added.

This compares with one in 10 people who did not live in poverty as a teenager, says the report for the research and development charity Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Getting out of poverty is also becoming more difficult.

People who were teenagers in the 1970s had double the chance of living in poverty as adults if they came from a poor family.

But teenagers in the 1980s who were brought up in poor families were nearly four times more likely to be poor as adults.

The report said it was hard to name the factors that caused poverty to persist.

But it found that income poverty went alongside other forms of deprivation, such as unemployment, low parent education and living in poor neighbourhoods.