A recent survey has shown that children’s vocabulary includes recession related terminology.

 90% of the local children's vocabulary has been affected by the prolonged gloom and doom of the economy. It also appears that the bigger the families the greater impact the recession has on children’s use of economic related words. 81% of parents with 2 children and 94% of parents with 3 or more children state this is the case. 80% of single child families stated that their child didn’t not pick up or use any of the recession-related vocabulary.

Due to the extensive media coverage and general economic discussions at home, almost 3 in 10 (27%) parents say that the word “recession” has entered their child’s vocabulary. “Unemployment” is the second most popular word, being used by every fifth child in Ireland (20%) with respect to the country’s economy.

Other words commonly pronounced by Irish children include “credit crunch” (16%), “redundancy” (15%), “NAMA” (15%), “mortgage” (13%) and “interest rates” (10%). The words less commonly used by children would include “negative equity” (7%), “overdrawn” (6%), “recessionista” (1%), “staycation” (1%).