In this paper we attempted to chart the impact of the early part of Ireland's economic crisis from 2008-2010 on the distribution of income. In order to decompose the impact of components of income, we utilised a microsimulation methodology the EU-SILC User Database. In order to do this we had to...

The systems of direct taxes and cash benefits in the Member States of the European Union vary considerably in size and structure. We explore their direct impacts on cross-sectional income inequality (termed redistributive effect for the purpose of this paper) using EUROMOD, a tax-benefit...

The drive to reduce child poverty is of particular interest in southern Europe, where the subsidiary role of the State in matters of family policy has implied that programmes of public assistance to poor families with children are often meagre or not available at all. The paper examines the...

The Brazilian government raises taxes amounting to 35% of GDP and spends more than two thirds of this on social programmes. These shares are in pair with the OECD averages and well in excess of Latin America averages. However, while tax-benefit systems in most OECD countries reduce income...

Retirement behaviours and elderly poverty issues have been the subject of much attention and discussion in recent years as most countries are facing a rapidly ageing society. Ireland enjoys a relatively young population compared with other European countries, but is also struggling with...

This paper estimates a structured life cycle model of family retirement decision using a unique historical dataset back simulated from Living in Ireland survey. Our model takes the advantages of the dataset and models retirement decisions in terms of monetary and leisure incentives, which...

In this paper we utilise microsimulation techniques in the form of an income generation model and a tax/benefit model to estimate both the fiscal and net private return to education at a marginal level. This is carried out empirically using Irish data across the period 1987-2005 and is the first...

Given the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus, the State has had to respond rapidly and quite severely to flatten the curve and slow the spread of the virus. This has had significant implications for many aspects of life with differential impacts across the population. The lack of timely...

Studies have shown that the previously growing inequality in China has stabilized and even declined since 2008 (Kanbur et al., 2021), nevertheless, the drivers of the latest trans-formation in income inequality remain to be unraveled. We address this research gap by examining the changes in the...

The urgency of the two crises, especially the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed the inadequacy of traditional statistical datasets and models to provide a timely support to the decision-making process in times of volatility. Drawing upon advances in data analytics for public policy and the increasing...