Using the nationally representative Slan dataset we calculate concentration indices for the incidence of obesity for men and women. We finder higher concentration indices for women than for men, but we also find that concentration indices fell between 2002 and 2007. However this appears to be...

There is now fairly substantial evidence of a socioeconomic gradient in low birthweight for developed countries. The standard summary statistic for this gradient is the concentration index. Using data from the recently published Growing Up in Ireland survey, this paper calculates this index for...

This paper reviews methods for studying dominance and inequality in health economics. It concentrates on "pure inequality" as opposed to inequality which is related to income or some other measure of household resources. The paper reviews methods for cases when health can be measured cardinally...

To combat growing levels of obesity, health related taxes have been suggested with taxes on foods high in fat or sugar. Such taxes have been criticised on the basis of their regressivity and potentially adverse impact upon poverty. This paper analyses the effect of such taxes on a range of...

Using the nationally representative Slan dataset of 2007 we analyse the relationship between self-reported and measured BMI. We find that selfreported BMI significantly underestimates obesity rates and suggest that the traditional threshold of 30 should be adjusted downwards. We outline a number...

This paper reviews Irish evidence on the link between socioeconomic factors and various measures of mental stress and well-being. The paper reviews both cross-section and time-series studies and finds that of all socioeconomic determinants, the most consistent role is found for unemployment. In...

Recent advances in the measurement of bi-dimensional poverty are applied to a measure of poverty which incorporates income and health poverty. The correlation between income and poverty is examined using the Receiver Operating Characteristics curve. Following from this unidimensional and...

When measuring health inequality using ordinal data, analysts typically must choose between indices specifically based upon ordinal data and more standard indices using ordinal data which has been transformed into cardinal data. This paper compares inequality rankings across a number of...

The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is frequently used as a measure of mental well-being. A consistent pattern across countries is that women report lower levels of mental well-being, as measured by the GHQ. This paper applies decomposition techniques to Irish data for 1994 and 2000 to...

The distributional characteristic is a measure which can be used in many applications in social cost-benefit analysis. In the application here, the distributional characteristics of a number of broad aggregates of goods are calculated for Ireland. These calculations can aid in assessing the...