This study analyses the factors associated with the persistence of poverty among youngsters in eleven European countries. Apart from the conditions that normally explain poverty and its persistence (low educational levels, living without a partner, leaving one’s original family, and joblessness), it shows the importance of the welfare system in attenuating the main risk factors to which young people are exposed in the process of transition to the adult state. It also shows how leaving one’s original family is one of the main risk factors for young people, while women have a greater probability of experiencing persistent poverty as a result of context variables and, in particular, inequality of opportunity.