Over the past 30 years, there have been periods of boom and bust, but average household incomes have grown strongly in Ireland. The distribution of household income has been broadly stable over this period, so that there has been substantial growth for low-, middle- and high-income households....

This paper examines how changes to the social welfare system for lone parents, such as the tightening of eligibility criteria for One-Parent Family Payment and the introduction of Jobseeker's Transitional Payment, affected lone-parent incomes and work incentives. Our main contributions are...