Increasing earnings inequality has been an important feature of the US and UK labour markets in recent years. The increase appears to be related to an increased demand for skilled labour and an increase in the returns to education. In this paper we examine what has happened to earnings...

In April 2000 the Irish government introduced a national minimum wage of IR£4.40 (&U20AC;5.58) an hour. We use data from a specifically designed survey of firms to estimate the employment effects of this change. Employment growth among firms with low-wage workers prior to the legislation was no...

As the extent of disability increases in society, there is an increasing need to understand related consequences in many aspects of social inclusion. In this paper, we provide a rigorous analysis of the transitions into and out of disability and the related consequences for employment. We...

The impact of changes in the level of unemployment on the U.K. size distribution of annual income is examined using cross-section data. Increased unemployment is shown to have a discernible regressive effect. However, reductions in shares were not highly concentrated at the very bottom of the...

In Ireland, approximately 30 per cent of the population (“medical cardholders”) receive free GP services while the remainder (“non-medical cardholders”) must pay for each visit. In 1989, the manner in which GPs were reimbursed by the State for their medical cardholder patients was...

The numbers buying private health insurance in Ireland have continued to grow, despite a broadening in entitlement to public care. About 40% of the population now have insurance, although everyone has entitlement to public hospital care. In this paper, we examine in detail the growth in...

Conventional methods of analysis of poverty assume resources are shared so that each individual in a household or family has the same standard of living. Nonmonetary indicators of living standards and deprivation are increasingly being used in measuring household poverty. This paper argues that...