Ireland offers a valuable case study of the evolution of wage inequality in a period of exceptional growth in output, employment and incomes from 1994 to 2007. We find that dispersion in hourly wages across all employees fell sharply to 2000, before increasing though much less sharply to 2007....

Both overall income inequality and inequality in the distribution of earnings rose sharply during the 1980s and 1990s in a number of industrialised countries, notably the UK and the USA. This makes it particularly important to know how the distribution of income in Ireland has been changing over...

A frequent refrain during recent debates on welfare cuts and tax increases has related to the need to “protect the vulnerable”. However, it is far from clear that a consensus exists on which individuals or groups are to be included under this heading with a consequent lack of clarity for the...

In the context of the significance that the life-cycle has been afforded in social policy discussion in Ireland, current national measures of poverty and social exclusion have been criticised for failing to capture such phenomena accurately in relation to particular stages of the life-course. In...

The life cycle concept has come to have considerable prominence in Irish social policy debate. However, this has occurred without any systematic effort to link its usage to the broader literature relating to the concept. Nor has there been any detailed consideration of how we should set about...

Between 2009 and 2011, data were collected under the first wave of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Over 8,500 people aged 50 and over and living in Ireland were interviewed about a wide range of topics covering socio-economic and health issues. Our primary goals in this paper are...

The link between income and subjective satisfaction with one’s financial situation is explored in this paper using a panel analysis of 1,998 individuals tracked through the course of the boom period in Ireland, 1994-2001. A dynamic ordered probit model which incorporates state dependence and...

This paper investigates inter-industry wage differentials in Ireland, taking advantage of access to a dataset that is uniquely suitable for this purpose, the 1996 Structure of Earnings Survey. This allows us to measure not simply overall differentials in the average wage across sectors, but also...

The extent and nature of participation in the labour market by persons affected by disability has a multitude of direct and indirect effects on their living standards and quality of life, and so is a critical area for investigation and policy concern. This paper seeks to quantify the effects of...

This paper briefly summarises the evidence that Ireland has a relatively high level of income inequality, which has been rather stable over time and reflects institutional legacies and choices made in the past. A comparative and over time perspective suggests that modest reductions in income...