This paper provides a detailed description of recent trends in inequality and poverty in Ireland. To date most of the analysis of inequality and poverty in Ireland has used cross-section data on income. We supplement the information on income with detailed data on individual expenditure taken...

Reliable measures of obesity are essential in order to develop effective policies to tackle the costs of obesity. We examine what, if anything, we can learn about obesity rates using self-reported BMI once we allow for possible measurement error. Existing approaches that correct for...

This paper uses data on 9 year old Irish children to examine the determinants of mathematical achievement among young children. We find that boys perform better in maths than girls and that this gender gap is driven by differences at the top of the achievement distribution. While there is no...

There is considerable debate about the role of wage rigidity in explaining unemployment. Despite a large body of empirical work, no consensus has emerged on the extent of wage rigidity. Previous attempts to empirically examine wage rigidity have been hampered by small samples and measurement...

Several papers have examined the intergenerational transmission of well being by looking at the relationship between parents' and children's income. However, by concentrating on those who are working these studies exclude some of the very poorest in society, the long-term unemployed. In this...

in this paper I examine the effects of the abolition of collge tutuion on education levels by social class.the empirical analysis shows that this policy has had little effect on the distribution of edcation across classes. I present a number of possible exp0lanations for this finding.

the persistence of poverty remains a major concern of policy makers. Despite this concern there has been little empirical work examining the issue. In this paper we provide estimates of poverty persistence in the U.K. by examining the degree of intergenerational mobility. Our findings support...

When economists talk about equality, they typically have equality of outcomes, like welfare or income in mind. However such a view of equality is not entirely satisfactory and theories of equality of opportunity have been developed and proposed as an alternative. While there has been some...

Much has been written about the relationship between economic growth and aggregate inequality in recent years. In this paper we extend this literature by examining whether economic growth affects, not the level, but rather the nature of inequality. To do this we focus on the Irish economy which...

Over the last 10-15 years female labour force participation rates have increased substantially in Ireland. At the same time there has been a large increase in wage inequality but a decline in total household income inequality. In this paper we examine the relationship between the trends in...