Governments are increasingly concerned about the capacity of pensions systems to meet demands in the coming years. According to the OECD, one part of the policy response in many countries will be greater private provision on the part of individuals through occupational and other pension...

A growing literature within economics has sought to examine the impacts of emigration on sending countries. Some of the studies have looked within families and have investigated how emigration affects those family members who are left behind. In this paper, we explore whether older parents of...

The few studies that have attempted to identify the causal effects of retirement on mental health and well-being have provided conflicting evidence. Hence, whether retirement affects mental health positively or negatively is still unclear. Our primary objective is to investigate the impact of...

Within the economics literature, the psychic costs of migration have been incorporated into theoretical models since Sjaastad (1962). However, the existence of such costs has rarely been investigated in empirical papers. In this paper, we look at the psychic costs of migration using alcohol...

Across the subjects of economics, sociology and demography, much has been written about the difficulties faced by immigrants. However, much less attention has been paid to the re-adjustment challenges migrants face on their return. In this paper, we examine whether and the extent to which a...

In March of 2010, the Irish government announced that the age at which the state pension is paid would be raised to 66 in 2014, 67 in 2021 and 68 in 2028. Also during 2010, the economic news became increasingly bad as the full scale of the fiscal and banking crises in Ireland emerged. The...

Between 2009 and 2011, fieldwork was undertaken for the first wave of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Extension information was collected on about 8,500 people aged 50 and over and living in Ireland, covering topics such as economic circumstances and health. One of the features...

Smoking, low physical activity and frequent alcohol consumption may have substantial health risks in terms of disease, quality of life and mortality. Understanding inequality in relation to these behaviours among older people is important in the context of a rapidly ageing population. In this...

A Marriage Bar is the requirement that women in certain jobs must leave that job when they marry. Ireland had a Marriage Bar in place until the 1970s. In 2014/2015, women participating in the The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing were asked - for the first time in a nationally-representative...

There is a growing interest in economics in the role played by personality in explaining labour market behaviour. Research to date points to the Big-5 personality traits being a possible determinant of wages and employment. However, most of this research is based on the assumption that...