In this paper, using Ireland, where debt issues are of particular salience as a test case, we seek to understand the extent to which the measures currently employed as national indicators of poverty and social exclusion succeed in capturing over-indebtedness and, more broadly, severity of debt...

Following an unprecedented boom that attracted the label ‘Celtic Tiger’, since 2008 Ireland has experienced the most severe economic and labour market crisis since the foundation of the State. The rapid deterioration in the labour market, alongside stringent austerity measures, had a...

In this paper we take advantage of the recent availability of data from the special module on material deprivation in the 2009 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between material deprivation and...

In this paper, taking advantage of the inclusion of a special module on material deprivation in EU-SILC 2009, we provide a comparative analysis of patterns of deprivation. Our analysis identifies six relatively distinct dimensions of deprivation with generally satisfactory overall levels of...

As part of its 2020 Strategy adopted, the EU has set a number of headline targets including one for poverty and social exclusion reduction. Our analysis in this paper suggests that, in focusing on the union of the three chosen component indicators, cross-nationally we are not comparing like with...

As awareness of the limitations of relying solely on income to measure poverty and social exclusion has become more widespread, attention has been increasingly focused on multi-dimensional approaches. To date efforts to measure multidimensional poverty and social exclusion in rich countries have...

A frequent refrain during recent debates on welfare cuts 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 consequent lack of clarity for the policy implications...

In this paper we apply self organising maps (SOM) to a detailed set of material deprivation indicators from the Irish component of European Union Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). The first stage of our analysis involves the identification and description of sixteen...

In this paper we address a set of interrelated issues. These comprise increasing concerns about reliance on nationally based income poverty measures in the context of EU-enlargement, the relative merits of one dimensional versus multidimensional approaches to poverty and social exclusion and the...