While a number of international studies have attempted to assess the influence of geographic accessibility on the decision to participate in higher education, this issue has not been addressed in detail in an Irish context. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap and to present a higher...

Although disincentive effects associated with payments have been regulaly found in research in the US and UK, the UK research is disputed and effects have been notable by their absence in studies from Continental Europe. However, much of this research has been hindered by inadequate models of...

The complex interweaving of public and private provision in Irish hospitals has led to concerns that hospital care is not available to all on the basis of need alone. Previous research on Irish hospitals found that utilisation was neutral across the income distribution controlling for health...

This paper reassesses the validity of a poverty measure combining relative income and non-monetary deprivation indicators, first developed and applied to Irish data for 1987, in the light of experience since then and current debates. A crucial issue is whether the measure has failed to capture...

Fixed term and casual employment have become increasingly common in OECD countries in the last decade. Research suggests that non-permanent contracts are associated with lower job quality. This paper examines differentials in three indicators of job quality in Ireland: hourly wage, probability...

This paper analyses the extent of equity of health service delivery across the income distribution in Ireland – that is the extent to which there is equal treatment for equal need irrespective of income. We find that almost all services, apart from dental and optician services, are used more...

Irish perinatal mortality rates have been falling steadily for a number of decades but evidence from the 1980s showed pronounced differentials in mortality rates across socio-economic groups. Between 1995 and 2006 Irish gross national product increased from 60 per cent of the EU average to 110...

: This paper explores levels and trends in the prevalence of Caesarean section delivery in Ireland between 1999 and 2007. Over this period the Caesarean section rate for singleton births in Ireland increased by over one quarter. Using data from the Irish National Perinatal Reporting System and...

In the literature on the links between socio-economic status (SES) and child health, there is evidence that the SES gradient is weaker for objective indicators of child health (e.g., height) than for subjective indicators (e.g., parental-assessed health). In this paper, we use crosssectional...